Lawfare Archive: Bananas and Corporate Accountability for Human Rights

From June 26, 2024: On June 10, the jury reached a verdict in the federal trial against Chiquita Banana. It found that the company had financed a paramilitary group in Colombia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in the deaths of eight men, and it awarded the victims' families $38 million in damages. It's the culmination of a 17-year-long multi-district litigation that had faced significant procedural, evidentiary, and legal challenges. And it may represent a new frontier in the fight to hold corporations legally accountable for human rights violations.

Executive Editor Natalie Orpett discussed the case and its implications with Michael Posner, Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

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