A jury in South Florida has dominated that Chiquita Brands is chargeable for eight killings carried out by a right-wing paramilitary group that the corporate helped finance in a fertile banana-growing area of Colombia through the nation’s decades-long inner battle.
The jury on Monday ordered the multinational banana producer to pay $38.3 million to 16 relations of farmers and different civilians who had been killed in separate episodes by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia — a right-wing paramilitary group that Chiquita bankrolled from 1997 to 2004.
The firm has confronted a whole bunch of comparable fits in U.S. courts filed by the households of different victims of violence by the paramilitary group in Colombia, however the verdict in Florida represents the primary time Chiquita has been discovered culpable.
The choice, which the corporate mentioned it deliberate to attraction, might affect the end result in different fits, authorized specialists mentioned.
The verdict in favor of the victims is a uncommon occasion — in Colombia and elsewhere — by which a personal company is held accountable to victims for its operation in areas with widespread violence or social unrest, authorized specialists mentioned.
“We’re very completely satisfied concerning the jury’s verdict, however you may’t escape that we’re speaking about horrific abuses,” mentioned Marco Simons, a lawyer for EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights group, who represented one household within the authorized declare.
Agnieszka Fryszman, one other lawyer who represented the plaintiffs, mentioned, “The verdict doesn’t convey again the husbands and sons who had been killed, however it units the file straight and locations accountability for funding terrorism the place it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.”
The jurors reached their choice after two days of deliberation and 6 weeks of trial in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, by which attorneys argued over the motivation for funds that Chiquita executives admitted making to the paramilitary group.
The State Department designated the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, often called the AUC, as a foreign terrorist organization in 2001.
Chiquita, as a part of a plea take care of the Department of Justice to settle costs of doing enterprise with a terrorist group, admitted in 2007 to having paid the paramilitaries $1.7 million, as an investigation revealed.
The United Self-Defense Forces had been a product of Colombia’s brutal civil struggle, which erupted within the Nineteen Sixties and killed a minimum of 220,000 folks.
They fashioned in 1997 as a coalition of closely armed far-right teams that drug traffickers and businesspeople turned to for defense from leftist guerrilla teams.
The struggle resulted in 2016 when the federal government and the principle leftist group, which was additionally accountable for killing civilians, signed a peace deal.
Lawyers representing the households within the South Florida trial argued that Chiquita’s operations benefited from the corporate’s relationship with the paramilitary group, which sowed worry throughout a 7,000-square-mile fertile farming area connecting Panama and Colombia till it disbanded in 2006.
They mentioned the group killed or compelled out farmers, permitting Chiquita to purchase land at depressed values and develop its operations by changing plantain farms to extra worthwhile banana farms.
Lawyers representing Chiquita questioned whether or not the victims had been killed by the paramilitaries or by different armed teams and mentioned that the corporate’s workers had additionally been threatened by the paramilitaries. Executives and workers, protection attorneys mentioned, had been being extorted by the self-defense forces and made funds to make sure their security.
“The scenario in Colombia was tragic for therefore many,” Chiquita mentioned in an announcement after the decision. “However, that doesn’t change our perception that there isn’t any authorized foundation for these claims.”
Some victims who had been a part of the lawsuit had been killed in entrance of their relations, attorneys for the plaintiffs mentioned.
In one case, an unidentified woman was touring to a farm by taxi together with her mom and stepfather once they had been stopped by gunmen, the attorneys mentioned through the trial. The males executed the stepfather after which fatally shot the mom as she tried to run away. They then gave the woman the equal of 65 cents to take a bus again to city.
Chiquita, which was previously often called the United Fruit Company, can be a defendant in a swimsuit filed in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest metropolis, asserting that funds Chiquita made to the United Self-Defense Forces rose to involvement in prison actions.
“The identify Chiquita resonates within the current historical past of the nation,” mentioned Sebastián Escobar Uribe, one of many attorneys within the Medellín swimsuit. “When you examine an organization with vital monetary muscle in a rustic like Colombia, the judicial system is susceptible to being co-opted by that firm.”
In the United States, it’s uncommon to carry an organization financially chargeable for human rights violations past the nation’s borders, mentioned James Anaya, who teaches worldwide human rights on the University of Colorado Law School.
The lawsuit that resulted within the South Florida verdict had been winding its approach by the court docket system because it was filed in 2007 and withstood a number of authorized challenges to succeed in a trial.
“It’s not unimaginable for these instances to occur,” Mr. Anaya mentioned. “There’s definitely a path for them.”
But, he added: “It’s not widespread. Everything has to fall into place.”
Human rights advocates in Colombia lauded the jury’s verdict.
Gerardo Vega, the previous director of Colombia’s National Land Agency, which is accountable for returning land to individuals who had been displaced by power, mentioned in a video assertion that the ruling was a vindication of the struggle in opposition to impunity within the United States.
“The Colombian justice system also needs to act,” Mr. Vega mentioned. “We want Colombian judges to convict the businesspeople who, identical to Chiquita, had been paying” paramilitary teams.
Raquel Sena, the widow of a farmworker who was killed within the banana-producing area, mentioned in an interview with a Colombian radio station that the United Self-Defense Forces had killed him after he refused to promote them his plot of farmland.
“I’m by no means going to beat his demise,” she mentioned in a video posted on X. “We need Chiquita Brands to acknowledge us as a result of they’re those who paid for folks to get killed right here.”
