"This is the start of corporate America having to pay for their exportation of jobs overseas and their disregard for overseas workers' health and safety,"
In a case with ramifications for U.S. companies that import products from overseas, a Los Angeles jury will decide this week the amount of punitive damages to impose on Dole Food Co. for using a pesticide that caused sterility in Nicaraguan workers.
The jury last week awarded the six Nicaraguan workers $3.2 million in compensatory damages, and said punitive damages are forthcoming.
The case marked one of the first times in the past 20 years that foreign workers outside of the maritime industry gained access to U.S. courts to sue a U.S. company that employed them, lawyers said. While U.S. judges agreed in past cases that workers had jurisdiction, they ruled it would be more convenient for
the lawsuit to be tried in the workers' home countries.
the lawsuit to be tried in the workers' home countries.
"This is massive. This changes the landscape," said David Egilman, a Brown University physician and professor who has been an expert witness in cases of worker poisonings. "This case shows that not only profits and exploitation will be globalized, but health and safety protections, too."
"Chinese law firms are gathering up plaintiffs now, looking up American products that cause harm," said Harris, whose firm has an office in Shanghai.
The Salt Lake Tribune in a series of stories last month documented that millions of Chinese workers develop fatal occupational diseases, including silicosis, leukemia, lymphoma and other cancers, while making U.S. products because they are routinely exposed to carcinogens. Chinese workers also routinely get limbs or fingers amputated because factories use outdated equipment not allowed under international standards.Such revelations and the Dole case have inspired Chinese lawyers to act, Harris said (lawyer of the Seattle firm).
In this era of globalization, the precise role of a U.S. business overseas determines the company's legal liability, Harris and other lawyers said. U.S. businesses that own factories or have "joint ventures" in factories overseas are potentially the most liable. Businesses that provide design specifications of a product or products also can be liable because they have participated in the manufacturing process, Harris said.
"If I'm a Chinese factory and 300 of my Chinese workers sue me for what went wrong, I'd sue the U.S. company or the workers could sue the U.S. company," Harris said. The workers could sue for negligence or failure to assess workers' safety.
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