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A lawsuit on behalf of migrant workers against Florida Crystals’ Osceola Farms Co. is headed to trial in federal court.
Palm Beach Post
A long-running lawsuit filed on behalf of 1,048 former migrant sugar cane cutters against Florida Crystals’ Osceola Farms Co. is headed to trial in federal court.
U.S. District Judge James Cohn of Fort Lauderdale last week rejected the West Palm Beach-based company’s bid to dismiss the complaint. The lawsuit, which stems from pay disputes going back to 1987, seeks to recover more than $5 million in back wages.
’’We are ready, willing and able to go forward and defend ourselves once again,’’ said Gaston Cantens, vice president of Florida Crystals. ``We are confident they will not be able to prove what they are alleging. You can’t prove something that didn’t happen.’’
The company has no intention of settling, he said.
’We’d rather pay our attorneys than let these extortionists’ attorneys make money off these individuals,’’ Cantens said.
In the same order, Cohn denied the workers’ attempts to make the case a class action, agreeing with a previous ruling in state court. He also struck down their wage claims for the 1991-92 and 1992-93 harvests because the allegations were not included in the original litigation.
But he did rule the case can be heard in federal court.
’’The federal interest in regulating immigration is unquestionably substantial,’’ Cohn wrote, adding that federal courts have long provided a forum for migrant workers to enforce their rights.
The workers were brought from Caribbean nations such as Jamaica under the federal H2-A designation, which is for temporary labor.
Greg Schell, an attorney with Florida Legal Services’ Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in Lake Worth, said Wednesday the case is precedent-setting.
’’We don’t want to be in state court . . . this is a special kind of contract. All the terms of it were dictated by federal law,’’ Schell said.
Some farmworker advocates argue federal courts are less susceptible to political pressure from growers than state courts, where judges are elected and often end up seeking campaign contributions from local businesses, including farmers, Schell said.
The case is scheduled to proceed to trial in July of this year, Schell said. The workers claim Osceola falsified its payroll records to avoid paying millions of dollars in wages.
Osceola Farms is a subsidiary of Flo-Sun, owned by the Fanjul family of Palm Beach, and is one of three Palm Beach County sugar mills — the others are Okeelanta and Atlantic — owned by the company.
In past years, attorneys for the cane cutters lost three lawsuits, two against Okeelanta and Atlantic, and in 2003, against the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida in Belle Glade. All three verdicts were upheld on appeal.
A fourth case, brought against U.S. Sugar Corp. of Clewiston, was settled