Judge refers Los Angeles lawyer to State Bar and prosecution agencies in Dole fraud

Judge refers lawyer for prosecution in Dole fraud

LOS ANGELES — A judge said Friday that she’s referring a Los Angeles lawyer to federal prosecutors and the State Bar over his involvement in lawsuits that she found were part of a massive fraud by purported Nicaraguan banana workers against U.S. food giant Dole.

Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney said that attorney Juan Dominguez, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuits against Dole, would be subject to charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, defrauding a court, conspiring to extort a United States company and possibly federal racketeering violations. She also ordered Dominguez to appear in her courtroom on June 15 for a hearing on sanctions for alleged contempt of court.

“All of the alleged actions by attorney Dominguez have criminal overtones,” she said.

However, Chaney refused Friday to stop release of a documentary movie titled “Bananas,” which Dole said is defamatory to the company and was instigated by the same lawyer.

An after-hours phone message left Friday at Dominguez’s law office was not returned.

Last month, Chaney dismissed two lawsuits that she said were part of a massive scheme to extort Dole for billions of dollars, claiming that men who worked on Dole banana plantations in Nicaragua in the 1970s were contaminated by a pesticide that rendered them sterile.

She dismissed the lawsuits after an emotional three-day series of hearings in which witnesses, some of whom had their identities disguised, testified about recruitment of men who never worked in the plantations to lie about exposure to the pesticide DBCP.

The judge called the fraud “outrageous and profound.”

Witnesses and investigators told of being in fear for their lives for exposing the fraud, and the judge said Friday this will present a challenge for those who prosecute Dominguez. She asked a lawyer for Dole if it would be possible to go forward without the “John Doe” witnesses.

Attorney Scott Edelman said there is sufficient testimony in the record of the hearings to prosecute Dominguez.

In a new twist, Dole attorney Andrea Neuman told the judge that a film purporting to be a documentary about Dominguez and another lawyer in the case is being marketed to U.S. film festivals. She said it is filled with falsehoods.

But Chaney said there was nothing she could do about the release of the film because it would constitute an impermissible prior restraint on free speech.

Michael Axline, a Sacramento lawyer who worked with Dominguez on the earlier trial, said he would advise the director to reconsider releasing the film.

Axline and his partners were absolved by the judge of complicity with Dominguez in the Nicaragua scheme, and she said there would be no sanctions against them.

“I do not believe that the law firm of Miller, Axline & Sawyer was involved in the origins of the conspiracy,” Chaney said. “I do not believe that they knew of the conspiracy or that they falsified evidence.”

But she added that they should have had suspicions.

“I would have thought that a bit of vigilance would have suggested to plaintiff’s counsel that something was awry,” she said.

Chaney said she would not refer the firm to the State Bar.