'Accidentes' lawyer fingered

That would be Juan J. Dominguez, whose smiling face appears on
ads - usually on the sides of MTA buses - for his personal injury practice. Well, Dominguez is suspected in that massive scheme to extort Dole Food while preying on impoverished rural Nicaraguans. Those allegations have upended an earlier judgment against Dole. From the Daily Journal (subscription only):

Dole's lawyers have fingered the Cuban-born lawyer as a key player in a large-scale operation to recruit and train Nicaraguan men for participation in hundreds of pesticide lawsuits. Thousands in the Central American nation have hooked up with Nicaraguan and American plaintiffs lawyers and are claiming to have worked on Nicaraguan banana farms during the 1970s, when fruit growers used a pesticide known as DBCP. The chemical has been linked in some instances with lowered sperm count.

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The litigation halted last month, when [Superior Court Judge Victoria G. Chaney] threw out two bellwether suits filed here by 11 Nicaraguans on grounds of widespread fraud and attempted extortion. Dominguez, who runs law offices in Los Angeles and Nicaragua, represented the men. After a three-day fraud hearing in late March, Chaney decided that at least 10 of the plaintiffs had never worked on any sort of plantation, and that their testimony was entirely fabricated.

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Dole will be lobbying hard for Dominguez to be thrown in jail on contempt charges. "Dole believes he and other lawyers are actively involved and are a driving force behind the fraud," said Dole attorney Andrea E. Neuman, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. "It's a little difficult to believe poverty stricken Nicaraguans are the masterminds behind this elaborate fraud scheme. They [the attorneys] recruited in the poorest areas of Nicaragua, made big promises, even gave people rationale on why it was okay to lie."

Chaney has scheduled a status conference today to set a date for contempt hearings against Dominguez. Here's an earlier AP story.