After years in court, a California judge threw out a case against Dole that alleged that the company's use of pesticides on Nicaraguan banana farms had sterilized them. The men were awarded millions by a jury in 2007, but the judge said she threw out the case due to 'massive fraud'. She said that some of the men named in the case had never been banana workers, and that there was not enough documentation for other workers. The decision has caused even more uproar in Nicaragua, where thousands claim that Dole's practices caused them medical difficulty. Lawyers for the workers tried to convince the judge that Dole had bribed witnesses, and questioned the number of secret witnesses in the case. A lawyer for Dole said that the people who had been hurt were hurt by fraudulent workers in the case, not Dole.
See "Judge throws out verdict awarding millions to Dole workers", Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2010