The history of DBCP from a judicial perspective

The efforts of workers in less-developed countries who have been exposed to 1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP) to obtain redress through the courts for damages suffered from these exposures are reported. The authors, who are lawyers, have represented more than 26,000 such workers. Evidence of the culpability of the U.S. manufacturers and the corporate users of DBCP, particularly Standard Fruit Company in Costa Rica, is presented. The damaged-worker plaintiffs are stymied by the application by the U.S. judicial system of forum non conveniens, which works in the defendants' favor by shunting the cases back to the plaintiffs' home countries, where the judicial systems are inadequate to deal with such cases and unlikely to be able to enforce judgments against the defendants.