Judge orders U.S. companies to pay banana workers exposed to pe

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- A Nicaraguan judge has ordered three U.S. companies to pay $490 million to 583 banana workers allegedly affected by the use of the pesticide Nemagon, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Saturday.

The alleged victims sued Dow Chemical, Shell Oil Co. and Standard Fruit Co. in 1998 for using the banned chemical Nemagon in the banana fields of western Nicaragua.

Standard Fruit Co. is an affiliate of Dole Food Company, Inc. The company did not return phone calls Saturday to its headquarters in Westlake Village, Calif. Shell spokesman Tim O'Leary declined to comment on the ruling.

Dow spokesman Scot Wheeler said the judgment was "unenforceable" because the case was supposed to be moved to a U.S. court, and because the ruling was "based on a law passed in Nicaragua that its own attorney general has called unconstitutional."

Lawyer Angel Espinoza said the judge made the ruling Wednesday. It was unclear how much each victim would receive, he said.

Nemagon contains the pesticide dibromochloropropane, and repeated exposure has been shown to cause cancer and sterility in laboratory animals and an increased risk of cancer in humans. The U.S. government banned the pesticide in 1977.

In 1993, more than 16,000 banana plantation workers from Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Philippines filed a class-action lawsuit in Texas against U.S. fruit and chemical companies for alleged illnesses as a result of exposure to chemicals.

The companies, including Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte, agreed to pay a total of $41.5 million in 1997 to those who proved they were sterile.