This is the best summary I could come up with:
Banana giant Chiquita Brands must pay $38.3 million to 16 family members of people killed during Colombia’s long civil war by a violent right-wing paramilitary group funded by the company, a federal jury in Florida decided.
The verdict Monday by a jury in West Palm Beach marks the first time the company has been found liable in any of multiple similar lawsuits pending elsewhere in U.S. courts, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.
These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process,” Marco Simons, EarthRights International General Counsel and one plaintiff’s lawyer, said in a news release.
Chiquita has insisted that its Colombia subsidiary, Banadex, only made the payments out of fear that AUC would harm its employees and operations, court records show.
“The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.”
In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to a U.S. criminal charge of engaging in transactions with a foreign terrorist organization — the AUC was designated such a group by the State Department in 2001 — and agreed to pay a $25 million fine.
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