July 25, 2023 • 32 mins
The case continues as the lawyers seek justice for the cane cutters. The jury reaches a decision.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want you to imagine you're a fly on the wall.
You've buzzed past security, up the elevator and attached yourself
to the wall of a courtroom on the eleventh floor
of the West Palm Beach Courthouse. It's got a great view.
You can see the Breaker's Hotel on the island town
of Palm Beach, the red tiles on the roof of
(00:23):
the museum that used to be the palatial home of
Henry Flagler, founder of Standard Oil. And the scene in
the courtroom itself is pretty interesting. There's a trial currently
under way Williams the Atlantic Sugar Association. This is in
nineteen ninety nine. And what do you see a table
where the lawyers who are suing a massive sugar cane
(00:43):
company are sitting in this David versus Goliath story. They
are definitely not Goliath. They're taking on this gargantuan corporation
on behalf of thousands of Caribbean sugar cane cutters. Then
there are the defense lawyers, the high priced attorneys who
were hired to defend the sugarcane company against claims that
(01:04):
they underpaid the workers. One thing's obvious. The company's lawyers
make a lot more money than the other side. These
hot shots are decked out in three piece suits and
you're occasionally blinded by the light refracting off the nugget
sized diamond ring. One of them sports. One thing all
the lawyers do have in common, exhaustion. It's the end
(01:26):
of a long, draining three week trial, and now it's
time for the closing statements, which surprisingly include a bit
of entertainment. It comes in the form of Willy Gary.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Willie was a master of the visual.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
This is Marie Brenner. You can see her sitting in
the gallery taking notes for her Vanity Fair article on
the case. Anyway, she's talking about Willie Gary, the flamboyant
jury spellbinder, who's representing this sugar company.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I could see, having seen him run up the steps
with his crocodile shoes on that he was a master
of the visual. Success begets success. But literally he spelled
it out. He said, it's fifteen percent what a jury hears,
an eighty five percent what a jury sees.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And what's there to see? Well props.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
In closing argument, he had prepared this little sign that
he held and put this is a frivolous case.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
In other words, it was a case concocted by the
cutter's lawyers just to make a buck. It didn't have
any merit. He keeps holding up the blue and yellow sign.
This is a frivolous case. This is a frivolous case.
This is a frivolous case. He says that more than
twenty times in his closing.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
That was his argument, This is a frivolous case. These
guys are just here for money. This is all about
the grubby lawyers trying to get money.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Quote, if you gave them a verdict in this case,
they would be laughing all the way to the bank.
Dave Gorman was one of the they of the lawyers
Willy was attacking.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And I went up to the judge and I said, John,
this is utterly unethical, it's improper, and you need to
tell him to stop. And the judge wouldn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, it's a classic case of projection that here comes
Willie with his Bentley's and his Gulf Stream jet called
Wings of Justice, saying the other side with their backpacks,
are in it for the money.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Willy lays it on. You know, sometimes life is not fair,
but you have to keep on believing, and you have
to never give up if you believe something is right,
because somewhere the truth will set you free. Ten years
of fighting a frivolous lawsuit, Dave has already given his
closing argument and now it's time for his rebuttal and
he just can't do it.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
When Willy got up and spent his entire time just
railing about me or about us, I was literally physically
too tired to get up. A trial is a jury
trial in particular. I mean that's hard work. It may
not seem like it, but you have to be paying
attention every minute of the day. You're up, you're down,
(04:06):
you're thinking on your feet, and try doing that for
a month. In the Atlantic Trial, No Respite.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Dave's white. He turns to his co counsel and says.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I can't do it. I'm just I can't do it.
I don't have the strength to get up and talk.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
The other lawyer, Edward Tuttenham, does have something to say.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
I remember feeling pretty desperate because the trial had not
gone well. I was the last person to argue, and
this was my final chance to try to convince this jury,
and I went through the clearance.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Order the clearance order, the contract of this whole case
was based on. Edward shows it to the jury.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I had it on big boards in front of the jury,
showed them the three sentences and said, this cast all
about this. And then I said, it was not just
all about this, It's also about the workers who killed
themselves in these fields, doing this work and being cheated
(05:21):
in an unbelievable way.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
In the final moments of the case, Edward was so frustrated.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
And that's when I turned.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Sitting in the courthouse is one of the Jamaican cutters
who testified in the case, a Dolphus Gordon.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
I turned and I said, A Dolphus, stand up, and
I remember saying, now, look at this man. This is
what this case is about. This man and ten thousand
of his fellow workers. And just then I teared up
unbelievably and turned my back on the jury and looked
at a Dolphus because I didn't want the jury to
(05:58):
see how emotional I was.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And he started to cry, and there was a silence
in the court room that was so heartbreaking, because the
jury understood, and I believe that some of the jurors
had tears in their eyes certainly Edward couldn't hold his
emotion in any longer.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
That was probably my proudest moment in the whole the
whole trial, was having Adolphus stand up.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Now the jury has got to make their decision. The
judge sends them off to deliberate. Looking around, some jurors
are crying, who will they side with in this case?
The cane cutters or the company. Over the last couple
of episodes, you've gotten to know the billionaire Cuban exiles
who are behind these companies, the fun Hools. Now you
know who the lawyers Dave and Edward are squaring off against.
(06:51):
So can these Davids slay these goliaths? We're about to
find out. I'm Celeste Heedley and from iHeartMedia, Imagine Audio
and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel. This is
Big Sugar Episode six, the decision and the drama.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
To start.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I just want to give you a quick refresher on
where we're at with the case. It all started with
a few idealistic lawyers that includes Edward Tuttenham, who had
a background in representing farm workers, and Dave Gorman, who
was a contract specialist. They launched a class action lawsuit
on behalf of thousands of sugarcane cutters from the Caribbean.
(07:42):
They sued five farms, alleging that the farms systematically underpaid
them in for years. This is not about how the
workers were treated, even if it feels like it should be.
This is about how they were paid. The lawyers are
trying to get back pay for the workers. At the
point where at in the story, the lawyers had won
a fifty one million dollar summary judgment, but that was
(08:05):
promptly overturned on appeal. From there, the case was split
up into five trials, all in front of jury's. This
first one with Willy Garry and his sign was against
the farm called Atlantic Sugar Association, which is owned by
the fan Hul's company, Florida Crystals. And there's a lot
on the line. If the verdict goes their way. That
(08:26):
means tens of millions of dollars for the workers and
a couple million for the lawyers too. And it would
also mean a lot personally for Edward and Dave. They'd
spent a decade working on this case and sunk a
lot of their own time, money, and energy into it.
If they lose it'd be a big blow. The crux
of their argument was this, according to their contracts, the
(08:48):
cutters were entitled to five dollars thirty cents for every
ton of cane they cut, but in actuality they were
paid closer to three or four dollars. The cutter's side
alleged that the sugar companies got away with it because
it was hard to follow the very complicated payment system
how the men were paid for each row of cane
they cut.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
All right, this is the closing or part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Here's how Dave put it in his closing argument. This
is before Willie made his frivolous case clothing.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
As we have seen repeatedly throughout this trial, this is
an industry which prospered and grew wealthy by making sure
that nobody except possibly the general manager and a board
of directors and the owners knew exactly what was going on.
My clients are not here looking or asking for sympathy.
They don't want pity. They came to this country to
(09:39):
work hard, to try to improve themselves. The only thing
they need from you, and the only thing they ask
of you, is that you consider the evidence fairly and
you show these people that the fact that they don't
live in this country does not mean that they can't
come into a court in this country and receive justice.
And if you do that, that is all they have
(09:59):
to ask, and that is all we asked for.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
The phone. Hol's lawyer, Willy Gary disagrees. Of course, he says,
the case is what frivolous, But also this, no one
expected that the cutters would be paid five dollars and
thirty cents a ton. None of the workers, none of
the farmers, no one, he says in his closing. Now,
if you can go back there and in your heart
and say there's a contract where the parties agreed that
(10:30):
they would pay five dollars thirty cents a ton for harvest, Kane,
you answer it, but you know it's not there. It's
not there, and it's never been there. Then Edward had
a Dolphus Gordon stand up and the jury went off
to deliberate. The judge asked the jury to answer a
single question.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Does the contract require Atlantic to pay plaintiffs a minimum
task rate of five dollars and thirty cents per ton
of harvest?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Cain, And with that it's up to the jury, what
do they believe who do they believe who will win more?
After the break, the hours ticked away, and it became
(11:23):
obvious to Dave Gorman that the jury members were going
to take their time.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
They were out that whole first day, and the second
day started and they were out for several more hours.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Meanwhile, there was one thing that was really worrying Dave
and the other plaintive lawyers, the jury instructions.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Initially, obviously, I was concerned because the instructions were bad
for us.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
The jury instructions were clearly stacked against them. They believed
did they intend to pay them five dollars and thirty
cents a ton? No, they had budgeted four dollars. We
knew that. On the other side, you have the cutters.
Did they intend to get or expect to get five
dollars and thirty cents a ton? No, they did not
(12:10):
know the document that that required even existed.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Dave felt a more appropriate question would have focused on
what the contract meant, not what the company intended, like
what would a reasonable person expect to be paid after
reading that contract. As the second day rolled on, though,
and the jury was still deliberating, Dave became more hopeful
(12:35):
they could win this.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
When they didn't come right back in and pour us out,
you start to become optimistic. And the longer it goes,
I figured, the better it was for us because the
instructions were tough, they were bad.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Finally, the jury came back in and Dave and Edward
were convinced they knew what the verdict was.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
It was clear we lost. You can tell when a
jury walked in if they don't look at you, you lost.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
And really I knew because they wouldn't look at me
when they came in. I knew we'd lost. And it
was that disappointing you bet you, you bet you.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
But then something strange happened.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I was in the courtroom when the jury returned to
the court and there was one woman who was crying,
and the foreman asked the judge to read an unusual statement,
you know.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
The bailiff said that the jury had a note that
they wanted the judge to read after he read their verdict.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
This was really unusual, a note they wanted the judge
to read.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I've never had a jury send a note like that
out and I don't think the judge had either.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
What's this all about, Well, they're about to find out. First,
the judge announces the verdict. He says, the jury rules
in favor of Atlantic, in favor of the fun Holes Company.
It's true David Edward had lost.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
There was no surprise. It was heartbreaking, but there was
no surprise. You know, ten years of your life passed
before your eyes, and the injustice of it all weighs
on you. But but there is no surprise.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Then the judge pulls out the odd note that the
jury had written and signed. Marie was sitting in the
courtroom and remembers hearing the judge read it out. The
jurors had.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Written Atlantic Sugar consistently misrepresented to the cutters the incentive
features of their task system of payment.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It was shameful the way they were paid by the
row of cane they cut. It was misrepresented. But then
came the big butt.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
However, the scope of the verdict form presented to us
by the court was limited to a single issue. Does
the contract require Atlantic to pay plaintiffs a minimum task
rate of five dollars and thirty cents per ton of
harvest kine.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
The jury thought the company had acted shamefully, but when
it came to the instructions from the judge, they couldn't
rule against them. But there was one last line in
the note. The jury said.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
This case was not frivolous.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Powerful Dave was grief stricken, as was Edward, and the
jurors were visibly moved too. Apparently one collapsed in the
elevator on the way down. Okay, time for something to
break up all this cordy court stuff. Time for a
bit of showbiz. In nineteen ninety six, Demi Moore became
(15:48):
the highest paid actress in the world. The movie that
earned her twelve point five million dollars was the critical
bomb Striptease. Demi Mour plays single mother who starts stripping
to finance a custody battle for her daughter, only to
find herself in some unusual situations. Well, that movie was
(16:10):
actually based on a critically acclaimed book, a book written
by Karl.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Hyacin as a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Carl's both a journalist and a novelist.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
It's very rich material here, for both the newspaperwork and
for fiction. There's only a fine line between the two
of them.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Here, Florida, the story of strip Tea's is this. Demi
Moore's character is working at this gentleman's club, and one
night a politician spots her.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
A congressman was in the audience at the strip joint
one night, and he falls, you know, kind of bizarrely
in love with her and becomes sort of a weird stalker.
And his only claim to power is that he's very
tight with a family of sugar barons.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And the name of the fictitious sugar barons these Demi
Moore's character ends up giving the congressman played by Burt
Reynolds a strip tease on the row hose boat and
even propositions him to do some sticky sideways tango on
a massive pile of sugar in one of their warehouses.
A politician in the pocket of a wealthy Latino sugar
(17:18):
family in Florida sound familiar now.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
I was asked, and you know, obviously at the time,
if the sugar baron family in the novel was the
fan Hooles, And of course I laughed and said, it's fiction.
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Even though Carl insists that the Rojo family is not
based on the Van Hooles, obviously the van hools weren't
so convinced. They do famously own a super yacht after all.
So back when the novel first launched, Carl got a
knock at his door. The visitor introduced himself George or
something like George. Anyway.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
I was living down in the Keys, and I said,
a really nice guy to come down and take me
to lunch and just sort of say, would you want
to come up and tour the sugar facility and you
want to come up and see the plan and see
the cane harvesting. I said, you know, I'll take a pass,
but it's nice of you to offer. And he said,
you know, I was just wondering about the book people
are saying, and I said, George, relax, it's just fiction.
(18:13):
But he was clearly trying to get me to say
that it was the fedouls and I didn't that I won't,
but again, it was so smooth, and he was such
a nice guy, and I think I think I ended
up buying lunch. I think I bought him stone crabs
or something, because I figured he drove all the way
to the Keys and I wasn't going to go look
at the sugar cane fields.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Marie says this is a typical move of the fun holes.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
They're very cool. They never allow you to see any
aspect of their discomfort. They have layers of PR people
who tend, lawyers who take care of that, who fight
their battles for them.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
They have boatloads of money they can afford to do
all that.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Plenty of cash to pump into PR reps and to lawyers,
and maybe even for visits to novelists. They're not going
to let their reputation be tainted. They're going to fight
until the bitter end. So back to the lawsuit. Even
though the Atlantic trial had concluded, the end was not
in sight yet. After the Atlantic jury trial wrapped up,
(19:20):
the Cutter's lawyers didn't quit, far from it. They got
right back to work. That's because there were actually three
more trials on the horizon.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Edward never wanted to throw in the towel. Edward is
an idealist. He believed, I'll live again, I'll fight another day,
I'll mortgage my house, I'll max out my credit cards.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Edward and Dave barely had any money left for the case.
Facing off against these massive sugarcane companies was a real
financial drain, but David Edward kept at it, throwing in
the towel wasn't an option.
Speaker 6 (19:54):
Do you consider yourself to be a stubborn person?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
No?
Speaker 7 (19:58):
Not?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I mean U I prefer determined. I think, not stubborn.
I stubborn. Stubborn to me implies that you're going to
stick to a position even if somebody puts facts in
front of you to show that you're wrong. I don't
really think I'm stubborn. I think I will not be
(20:18):
run over easily, but I don't think that makes me stubborn.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
The semantics of stubborn aside. The Atlantic trial loss didn't
stop Dave. Even if it was expensive, time consuming, exhausting,
He continued working on the other cases.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
You decided to keep going.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
What am I supposed to do? What would you do?
What would you what would you have me do? Say
these guys, sorry, I'm tired of doing this. I mean, seriously,
what would you have me do? That's the question? What
should I have done? What would be the right thing
to do? Do you think?
Speaker 6 (20:56):
I don't know. It's difficult for me to put myself
and you're in that position. But it must have been
emotionally draining.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Well. Of course it was financially draining too. I was
putting in more time than anybody else, because I was
at every hearing and I believe every single deposition, and
there were lots, but these guys got screwed, Okay, I mean,
(21:24):
I don't know. Maybe I, a smarter guy would have
would have walked away. I guess I don't know, but
I just that's I couldn't see me doing that.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Next up the trial against another fun whole company, this
one called Oka Lanta.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
The ok Lanta trial unfolded almost identically to the Atlantic.
It was obvious we weren't going to win.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
At what point did you think we're not going to
win this?
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Oh, probably the second day of a three three and
a half week trial.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Then there was the sugarcane Grower's co Op trial, a
cooperative made up of dozens of small to medium sized
sugarcane farms in Florida.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Bottom line, as we lost that, we are basically the
same jury instructions that were killing us every time.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
They lost that one too, And it's.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Like, Jesus, you know what else could go wrong here?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So far? They'd lost every trial three It had to
have been disappointing at the minimum.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Oh, wrist cutting disappointing. I had been working on the
case if you counted the initial trying to figure out
what was going on, I'd probably been working on the
case for fifteen years. It had been fifty percent of
my life during those fifteen years, and it had all
come to nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
The lawsuits had become like a mold growing, proliferating, overrunning
their lives. Edward was even growing sugarcane in his backyard.
Greg Shell, who represents migrant farm workers too, was watching
from the sidelines.
Speaker 7 (23:05):
Dave was, who had been I think doing reasonably well
as in his prior practice, was all of a sudden
not making any money because these cases were not paying off.
So Dave's practice was slipping badly, and it coincided with
Dave's marriage was breaking up. I think it was a
tough time for Day in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
And the legal dream team was falling apart. Relations between
the lawyers representing the cane cutters were disintegrating more after
the break. There's one piece of tape I want to
play you from my interview with Edward Tuttenham that says
(23:45):
a lot about what happened next. You know how people
talk about a pregnant pause, like a silence that's loaded
with meaning, well, this pause was in its third trimester.
It's when I asked Edward about his co counsel, Dave Gore.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Tell me about Dave. What kind of guy is he?
Speaker 4 (24:12):
He's a very nice guy, very smart, very smart.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Okay, Look, I'm not trying to stir up anything or
read too much into this, but that pause, to me
is imbued with five and a half seconds of flashbacks
of what happened between the lawyers after they lost the
first three jury trials.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
When you lose, there's a human tendency to fingerpoint and
figure out why did we lose? And I think the
lawyers had very different views of this.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Inevitably, in a case like this, the lawyers are exhausted.
They are doing a lot of second guessing. It is
why did this happen? Why did that happen? And they
were angry with each other.
Speaker 7 (24:55):
I think people were more inclined to be accusatory of
one another rather than sort of the cooperative group that
had started out with this case.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
There's two sides, maybe three, to every story. Right from
Edward's perspective, he thought they needed a better trial lawyer
to help them.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
I was convinced that it was a waste of time
to go forward with any more trials without hiring somebody
who was more experienced and better equipped to do a
jury trial than we were.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Dave disagrees.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
He thought that our problem was not being able to
explain it to the jury. And I said, no, you're wrong.
The jury got the case, they understood it. It was
the judge that screwed us.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
So Edward brings in this lawyer from Texas, which did
not go down well.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
And said, here's my friend, Tim. Tim is a brilliant
lawyer and he can in this case certainly insinuating that
Dave Gorman, you're not good enough.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Then there's another side of the story.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
The Vanity Fair article had been simmering in the background.
Then this whole movie deal.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Him movie deal. Yeah, there's another movie to talk about
in this story. As all this was unfolding, Marie publishes
their article in Vanity Fair about the case and the lawyers.
According to Edward, he agreed to be interviewed and help
Marie because he thought the article might be turned into
a movie and generate some money for the cases.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
It might be picked up for a movie and there
would be movie rights and we could make some money.
That would fund further litigation because we were pretty much
running out of funds.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And guess what, it did get optioned for a movie.
None other than Robert De Niro's production company, Tribeca Productions
and Universal Pictures wanted to make it. He was going
to star in it, and amazingly, Jodi Foster was in
too direct and star alongside him.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
They were willing to pay for my life rights and
my wife's life rights. So we did this thinking this
would generate funds for the.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Case because there was one case still ongoing. This was
legally a big problem.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
Legally, in the United States, you are not, as an attorney,
permitted to sell literary or film rights to a case
that's still active. The reason being that you may sort
of start playing to the cameras. In other words, you'll
make decisions that are going to benefit you or your
literary rights or your film rights, rather than what's best
(27:42):
for your client. And you're supposed to be looking out
for your client at all times.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
The case was still going on, you can't do that.
We didn't want to make it public, but I told
Ed that he couldn't stay on the case.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
I was terminated from the case, and what funds were
paid initially for the life rights didn't go to the case,
and eventually Jodie Foster decided not to make the movie,
so it never generated very much. So that's when we
parted ways. Right at that same time, my daughter was born,
(28:20):
my first child, and I was happy to stay home
and take care of my daughter and try to forget
about sugarcane.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
That's hard to do it when you have a row
of sugar cane growing in your backyard.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Well, I didn't forget about it completely. It's a very
pretty plan. I had other things in my life other
than sugarcane for once, and people healed.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So Edward gets kicked off the case. By now, it's
the early two thousands. The lawyers have been working on
these class actions for some fifteen year years and it
had all come to nought. But there was still one
chance to prevail, one chance to get the workers their
back wages. The final jury trial, the one against Osiola.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
The Ostiola case was on life support.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
The farm is owned by the fun Holes, so it's
not going to be an easy fight here. Greg officially
joins the legal team, and he and Dave decide to
shift their tactics completely.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
We decided that since we were not getting anywhere. You know,
it's like the definition of insanity, of course, is to
keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
While they're at it, let's step back a little.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The amount of off and out of the courtroom drama.
In this case, it was an epic canvas of American life.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
So next time, we've got our journalistic shovel ready because
we're digging further into things going on in the periphery
of this case, things that bring to focus the power
of Big sugar in America, not just in terms of
legislation and migrant workers, but also something even more personal
to you, how the industry has transformed the very food
(30:12):
you eat.
Speaker 8 (30:13):
It's been behind closed doors, you know, they really have
had a strategy to influence the public.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
We tag along with a dentist turned detective who uncovered
the industry's crackedy pr strategies.
Speaker 8 (30:27):
Maybe it actually was a conspiracy, you know, behind the scenes.
It's something that we didn't know about.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
That's next time on Big Sugar.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
It's pretty astounding their power.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Big Sugar is produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions
and Novel for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me
Celeste Hendley. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at
Weekday Fund Productions. It's executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Chloke,
and Marie Brenner. Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler.
(31:08):
The researcher is Nadia Metti. Production management from Scherie Houston,
Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian.
Field reporting by Amber Amortigee. Sound design and mixing by
Eli Block, Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen. Original music composed
by Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by Nicholas Alexander.
(31:33):
Special thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author of the book Big Sugar,
and Stephanie Black, director of the documentary H two Worker.
Big Sugar is based on the Vanity Fair article in
the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Brenner
I want you to imagine you're a fly on the wall.
You've buzzed past security, up the elevator and attached yourself
to the wall of a courtroom on the eleventh floor
of the West Palm Beach Courthouse. It's got a great view.
You can see the Breaker's Hotel on the island town
of Palm Beach, the red tiles on the roof of
(00:23):
the museum that used to be the palatial home of
Henry Flagler, founder of Standard Oil. And the scene in
the courtroom itself is pretty interesting. There's a trial currently
under way Williams the Atlantic Sugar Association. This is in
nineteen ninety nine. And what do you see a table
where the lawyers who are suing a massive sugar cane
(00:43):
company are sitting in this David versus Goliath story. They
are definitely not Goliath. They're taking on this gargantuan corporation
on behalf of thousands of Caribbean sugar cane cutters. Then
there are the defense lawyers, the high priced attorneys who
were hired to defend the sugarcane company against claims that
(01:04):
they underpaid the workers. One thing's obvious. The company's lawyers
make a lot more money than the other side. These
hot shots are decked out in three piece suits and
you're occasionally blinded by the light refracting off the nugget
sized diamond ring. One of them sports. One thing all
the lawyers do have in common, exhaustion. It's the end
(01:26):
of a long, draining three week trial, and now it's
time for the closing statements, which surprisingly include a bit
of entertainment. It comes in the form of Willy Gary.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Willie was a master of the visual.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
This is Marie Brenner. You can see her sitting in
the gallery taking notes for her Vanity Fair article on
the case. Anyway, she's talking about Willie Gary, the flamboyant
jury spellbinder, who's representing this sugar company.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I could see, having seen him run up the steps
with his crocodile shoes on that he was a master
of the visual. Success begets success. But literally he spelled
it out. He said, it's fifteen percent what a jury hears,
an eighty five percent what a jury sees.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And what's there to see? Well props.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
In closing argument, he had prepared this little sign that
he held and put this is a frivolous case.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
In other words, it was a case concocted by the
cutter's lawyers just to make a buck. It didn't have
any merit. He keeps holding up the blue and yellow sign.
This is a frivolous case. This is a frivolous case.
This is a frivolous case. He says that more than
twenty times in his closing.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
That was his argument, This is a frivolous case. These
guys are just here for money. This is all about
the grubby lawyers trying to get money.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Quote, if you gave them a verdict in this case,
they would be laughing all the way to the bank.
Dave Gorman was one of the they of the lawyers
Willy was attacking.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And I went up to the judge and I said, John,
this is utterly unethical, it's improper, and you need to
tell him to stop. And the judge wouldn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, it's a classic case of projection that here comes
Willie with his Bentley's and his Gulf Stream jet called
Wings of Justice, saying the other side with their backpacks,
are in it for the money.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Willy lays it on. You know, sometimes life is not fair,
but you have to keep on believing, and you have
to never give up if you believe something is right,
because somewhere the truth will set you free. Ten years
of fighting a frivolous lawsuit, Dave has already given his
closing argument and now it's time for his rebuttal and
he just can't do it.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
When Willy got up and spent his entire time just
railing about me or about us, I was literally physically
too tired to get up. A trial is a jury
trial in particular. I mean that's hard work. It may
not seem like it, but you have to be paying
attention every minute of the day. You're up, you're down,
(04:06):
you're thinking on your feet, and try doing that for
a month. In the Atlantic Trial, No Respite.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Dave's white. He turns to his co counsel and says.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I can't do it. I'm just I can't do it.
I don't have the strength to get up and talk.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
The other lawyer, Edward Tuttenham, does have something to say.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
I remember feeling pretty desperate because the trial had not
gone well. I was the last person to argue, and
this was my final chance to try to convince this jury,
and I went through the clearance.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Order the clearance order, the contract of this whole case
was based on. Edward shows it to the jury.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I had it on big boards in front of the jury,
showed them the three sentences and said, this cast all
about this. And then I said, it was not just
all about this, It's also about the workers who killed
themselves in these fields, doing this work and being cheated
(05:21):
in an unbelievable way.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
In the final moments of the case, Edward was so frustrated.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
And that's when I turned.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Sitting in the courthouse is one of the Jamaican cutters
who testified in the case, a Dolphus Gordon.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
I turned and I said, A Dolphus, stand up, and
I remember saying, now, look at this man. This is
what this case is about. This man and ten thousand
of his fellow workers. And just then I teared up
unbelievably and turned my back on the jury and looked
at a Dolphus because I didn't want the jury to
(05:58):
see how emotional I was.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And he started to cry, and there was a silence
in the court room that was so heartbreaking, because the
jury understood, and I believe that some of the jurors
had tears in their eyes certainly Edward couldn't hold his
emotion in any longer.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
That was probably my proudest moment in the whole the
whole trial, was having Adolphus stand up.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Now the jury has got to make their decision. The
judge sends them off to deliberate. Looking around, some jurors
are crying, who will they side with in this case?
The cane cutters or the company. Over the last couple
of episodes, you've gotten to know the billionaire Cuban exiles
who are behind these companies, the fun Hools. Now you
know who the lawyers Dave and Edward are squaring off against.
(06:51):
So can these Davids slay these goliaths? We're about to
find out. I'm Celeste Heedley and from iHeartMedia, Imagine Audio
and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel. This is
Big Sugar Episode six, the decision and the drama.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
To start.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I just want to give you a quick refresher on
where we're at with the case. It all started with
a few idealistic lawyers that includes Edward Tuttenham, who had
a background in representing farm workers, and Dave Gorman, who
was a contract specialist. They launched a class action lawsuit
on behalf of thousands of sugarcane cutters from the Caribbean.
(07:42):
They sued five farms, alleging that the farms systematically underpaid
them in for years. This is not about how the
workers were treated, even if it feels like it should be.
This is about how they were paid. The lawyers are
trying to get back pay for the workers. At the
point where at in the story, the lawyers had won
a fifty one million dollar summary judgment, but that was
(08:05):
promptly overturned on appeal. From there, the case was split
up into five trials, all in front of jury's. This
first one with Willy Garry and his sign was against
the farm called Atlantic Sugar Association, which is owned by
the fan Hul's company, Florida Crystals. And there's a lot
on the line. If the verdict goes their way. That
(08:26):
means tens of millions of dollars for the workers and
a couple million for the lawyers too. And it would
also mean a lot personally for Edward and Dave. They'd
spent a decade working on this case and sunk a
lot of their own time, money, and energy into it.
If they lose it'd be a big blow. The crux
of their argument was this, according to their contracts, the
(08:48):
cutters were entitled to five dollars thirty cents for every
ton of cane they cut, but in actuality they were
paid closer to three or four dollars. The cutter's side
alleged that the sugar companies got away with it because
it was hard to follow the very complicated payment system
how the men were paid for each row of cane
they cut.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
All right, this is the closing or part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Here's how Dave put it in his closing argument. This
is before Willie made his frivolous case clothing.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
As we have seen repeatedly throughout this trial, this is
an industry which prospered and grew wealthy by making sure
that nobody except possibly the general manager and a board
of directors and the owners knew exactly what was going on.
My clients are not here looking or asking for sympathy.
They don't want pity. They came to this country to
(09:39):
work hard, to try to improve themselves. The only thing
they need from you, and the only thing they ask
of you, is that you consider the evidence fairly and
you show these people that the fact that they don't
live in this country does not mean that they can't
come into a court in this country and receive justice.
And if you do that, that is all they have
(09:59):
to ask, and that is all we asked for.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
The phone. Hol's lawyer, Willy Gary disagrees. Of course, he says,
the case is what frivolous, But also this, no one
expected that the cutters would be paid five dollars and
thirty cents a ton. None of the workers, none of
the farmers, no one, he says in his closing. Now,
if you can go back there and in your heart
and say there's a contract where the parties agreed that
(10:30):
they would pay five dollars thirty cents a ton for harvest, Kane,
you answer it, but you know it's not there. It's
not there, and it's never been there. Then Edward had
a Dolphus Gordon stand up and the jury went off
to deliberate. The judge asked the jury to answer a
single question.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Does the contract require Atlantic to pay plaintiffs a minimum
task rate of five dollars and thirty cents per ton
of harvest?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Cain, And with that it's up to the jury, what
do they believe who do they believe who will win more?
After the break, the hours ticked away, and it became
(11:23):
obvious to Dave Gorman that the jury members were going
to take their time.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
They were out that whole first day, and the second
day started and they were out for several more hours.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Meanwhile, there was one thing that was really worrying Dave
and the other plaintive lawyers, the jury instructions.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Initially, obviously, I was concerned because the instructions were bad
for us.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
The jury instructions were clearly stacked against them. They believed
did they intend to pay them five dollars and thirty
cents a ton? No, they had budgeted four dollars. We
knew that. On the other side, you have the cutters.
Did they intend to get or expect to get five
dollars and thirty cents a ton? No, they did not
(12:10):
know the document that that required even existed.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Dave felt a more appropriate question would have focused on
what the contract meant, not what the company intended, like
what would a reasonable person expect to be paid after
reading that contract. As the second day rolled on, though,
and the jury was still deliberating, Dave became more hopeful
(12:35):
they could win this.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
When they didn't come right back in and pour us out,
you start to become optimistic. And the longer it goes,
I figured, the better it was for us because the
instructions were tough, they were bad.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Finally, the jury came back in and Dave and Edward
were convinced they knew what the verdict was.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
It was clear we lost. You can tell when a
jury walked in if they don't look at you, you lost.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
And really I knew because they wouldn't look at me
when they came in. I knew we'd lost. And it
was that disappointing you bet you, you bet you.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
But then something strange happened.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I was in the courtroom when the jury returned to
the court and there was one woman who was crying,
and the foreman asked the judge to read an unusual statement,
you know.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
The bailiff said that the jury had a note that
they wanted the judge to read after he read their verdict.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
This was really unusual, a note they wanted the judge
to read.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I've never had a jury send a note like that
out and I don't think the judge had either.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
What's this all about, Well, they're about to find out. First,
the judge announces the verdict. He says, the jury rules
in favor of Atlantic, in favor of the fun Holes Company.
It's true David Edward had lost.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
There was no surprise. It was heartbreaking, but there was
no surprise. You know, ten years of your life passed
before your eyes, and the injustice of it all weighs
on you. But but there is no surprise.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Then the judge pulls out the odd note that the
jury had written and signed. Marie was sitting in the
courtroom and remembers hearing the judge read it out. The
jurors had.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Written Atlantic Sugar consistently misrepresented to the cutters the incentive
features of their task system of payment.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It was shameful the way they were paid by the
row of cane they cut. It was misrepresented. But then
came the big butt.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
However, the scope of the verdict form presented to us
by the court was limited to a single issue. Does
the contract require Atlantic to pay plaintiffs a minimum task
rate of five dollars and thirty cents per ton of
harvest kine.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
The jury thought the company had acted shamefully, but when
it came to the instructions from the judge, they couldn't
rule against them. But there was one last line in
the note. The jury said.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
This case was not frivolous.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Powerful Dave was grief stricken, as was Edward, and the
jurors were visibly moved too. Apparently one collapsed in the
elevator on the way down. Okay, time for something to
break up all this cordy court stuff. Time for a
bit of showbiz. In nineteen ninety six, Demi Moore became
(15:48):
the highest paid actress in the world. The movie that
earned her twelve point five million dollars was the critical
bomb Striptease. Demi Mour plays single mother who starts stripping
to finance a custody battle for her daughter, only to
find herself in some unusual situations. Well, that movie was
(16:10):
actually based on a critically acclaimed book, a book written
by Karl.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Hyacin as a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Carl's both a journalist and a novelist.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
It's very rich material here, for both the newspaperwork and
for fiction. There's only a fine line between the two
of them.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Here, Florida, the story of strip Tea's is this. Demi
Moore's character is working at this gentleman's club, and one
night a politician spots her.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
A congressman was in the audience at the strip joint
one night, and he falls, you know, kind of bizarrely
in love with her and becomes sort of a weird stalker.
And his only claim to power is that he's very
tight with a family of sugar barons.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And the name of the fictitious sugar barons these Demi
Moore's character ends up giving the congressman played by Burt
Reynolds a strip tease on the row hose boat and
even propositions him to do some sticky sideways tango on
a massive pile of sugar in one of their warehouses.
A politician in the pocket of a wealthy Latino sugar
(17:18):
family in Florida sound familiar now.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
I was asked, and you know, obviously at the time,
if the sugar baron family in the novel was the
fan Hooles, And of course I laughed and said, it's fiction.
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Even though Carl insists that the Rojo family is not
based on the Van Hooles, obviously the van hools weren't
so convinced. They do famously own a super yacht after all.
So back when the novel first launched, Carl got a
knock at his door. The visitor introduced himself George or
something like George. Anyway.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
I was living down in the Keys, and I said,
a really nice guy to come down and take me
to lunch and just sort of say, would you want
to come up and tour the sugar facility and you
want to come up and see the plan and see
the cane harvesting. I said, you know, I'll take a pass,
but it's nice of you to offer. And he said,
you know, I was just wondering about the book people
are saying, and I said, George, relax, it's just fiction.
(18:13):
But he was clearly trying to get me to say
that it was the fedouls and I didn't that I won't,
but again, it was so smooth, and he was such
a nice guy, and I think I think I ended
up buying lunch. I think I bought him stone crabs
or something, because I figured he drove all the way
to the Keys and I wasn't going to go look
at the sugar cane fields.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Marie says this is a typical move of the fun holes.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
They're very cool. They never allow you to see any
aspect of their discomfort. They have layers of PR people
who tend, lawyers who take care of that, who fight
their battles for them.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
They have boatloads of money they can afford to do
all that.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Plenty of cash to pump into PR reps and to lawyers,
and maybe even for visits to novelists. They're not going
to let their reputation be tainted. They're going to fight
until the bitter end. So back to the lawsuit. Even
though the Atlantic trial had concluded, the end was not
in sight yet. After the Atlantic jury trial wrapped up,
(19:20):
the Cutter's lawyers didn't quit, far from it. They got
right back to work. That's because there were actually three
more trials on the horizon.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Edward never wanted to throw in the towel. Edward is
an idealist. He believed, I'll live again, I'll fight another day,
I'll mortgage my house, I'll max out my credit cards.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Edward and Dave barely had any money left for the case.
Facing off against these massive sugarcane companies was a real
financial drain, but David Edward kept at it, throwing in
the towel wasn't an option.
Speaker 6 (19:54):
Do you consider yourself to be a stubborn person?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
No?
Speaker 7 (19:58):
Not?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I mean U I prefer determined. I think, not stubborn.
I stubborn. Stubborn to me implies that you're going to
stick to a position even if somebody puts facts in
front of you to show that you're wrong. I don't
really think I'm stubborn. I think I will not be
(20:18):
run over easily, but I don't think that makes me stubborn.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
The semantics of stubborn aside. The Atlantic trial loss didn't
stop Dave. Even if it was expensive, time consuming, exhausting,
He continued working on the other cases.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
You decided to keep going.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
What am I supposed to do? What would you do?
What would you what would you have me do? Say
these guys, sorry, I'm tired of doing this. I mean, seriously,
what would you have me do? That's the question? What
should I have done? What would be the right thing
to do? Do you think?
Speaker 6 (20:56):
I don't know. It's difficult for me to put myself
and you're in that position. But it must have been
emotionally draining.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Well. Of course it was financially draining too. I was
putting in more time than anybody else, because I was
at every hearing and I believe every single deposition, and
there were lots, but these guys got screwed, Okay, I mean,
(21:24):
I don't know. Maybe I, a smarter guy would have
would have walked away. I guess I don't know, but
I just that's I couldn't see me doing that.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Next up the trial against another fun whole company, this
one called Oka Lanta.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
The ok Lanta trial unfolded almost identically to the Atlantic.
It was obvious we weren't going to win.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
At what point did you think we're not going to
win this?
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Oh, probably the second day of a three three and
a half week trial.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Then there was the sugarcane Grower's co Op trial, a
cooperative made up of dozens of small to medium sized
sugarcane farms in Florida.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Bottom line, as we lost that, we are basically the
same jury instructions that were killing us every time.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
They lost that one too, And it's.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Like, Jesus, you know what else could go wrong here?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So far? They'd lost every trial three It had to
have been disappointing at the minimum.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Oh, wrist cutting disappointing. I had been working on the
case if you counted the initial trying to figure out
what was going on, I'd probably been working on the
case for fifteen years. It had been fifty percent of
my life during those fifteen years, and it had all
come to nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
The lawsuits had become like a mold growing, proliferating, overrunning
their lives. Edward was even growing sugarcane in his backyard.
Greg Shell, who represents migrant farm workers too, was watching
from the sidelines.
Speaker 7 (23:05):
Dave was, who had been I think doing reasonably well
as in his prior practice, was all of a sudden
not making any money because these cases were not paying off.
So Dave's practice was slipping badly, and it coincided with
Dave's marriage was breaking up. I think it was a
tough time for Day in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
And the legal dream team was falling apart. Relations between
the lawyers representing the cane cutters were disintegrating more after
the break. There's one piece of tape I want to
play you from my interview with Edward Tuttenham that says
(23:45):
a lot about what happened next. You know how people
talk about a pregnant pause, like a silence that's loaded
with meaning, well, this pause was in its third trimester.
It's when I asked Edward about his co counsel, Dave Gore.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Tell me about Dave. What kind of guy is he?
Speaker 4 (24:12):
He's a very nice guy, very smart, very smart.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Okay, Look, I'm not trying to stir up anything or
read too much into this, but that pause, to me
is imbued with five and a half seconds of flashbacks
of what happened between the lawyers after they lost the
first three jury trials.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
When you lose, there's a human tendency to fingerpoint and
figure out why did we lose? And I think the
lawyers had very different views of this.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Inevitably, in a case like this, the lawyers are exhausted.
They are doing a lot of second guessing. It is
why did this happen? Why did that happen? And they
were angry with each other.
Speaker 7 (24:55):
I think people were more inclined to be accusatory of
one another rather than sort of the cooperative group that
had started out with this case.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
There's two sides, maybe three, to every story. Right from
Edward's perspective, he thought they needed a better trial lawyer
to help them.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
I was convinced that it was a waste of time
to go forward with any more trials without hiring somebody
who was more experienced and better equipped to do a
jury trial than we were.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Dave disagrees.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
He thought that our problem was not being able to
explain it to the jury. And I said, no, you're wrong.
The jury got the case, they understood it. It was
the judge that screwed us.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
So Edward brings in this lawyer from Texas, which did
not go down well.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
And said, here's my friend, Tim. Tim is a brilliant
lawyer and he can in this case certainly insinuating that
Dave Gorman, you're not good enough.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Then there's another side of the story.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
The Vanity Fair article had been simmering in the background.
Then this whole movie deal.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Him movie deal. Yeah, there's another movie to talk about
in this story. As all this was unfolding, Marie publishes
their article in Vanity Fair about the case and the lawyers.
According to Edward, he agreed to be interviewed and help
Marie because he thought the article might be turned into
a movie and generate some money for the cases.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
It might be picked up for a movie and there
would be movie rights and we could make some money.
That would fund further litigation because we were pretty much
running out of funds.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And guess what, it did get optioned for a movie.
None other than Robert De Niro's production company, Tribeca Productions
and Universal Pictures wanted to make it. He was going
to star in it, and amazingly, Jodi Foster was in
too direct and star alongside him.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
They were willing to pay for my life rights and
my wife's life rights. So we did this thinking this
would generate funds for the.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Case because there was one case still ongoing. This was
legally a big problem.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
Legally, in the United States, you are not, as an attorney,
permitted to sell literary or film rights to a case
that's still active. The reason being that you may sort
of start playing to the cameras. In other words, you'll
make decisions that are going to benefit you or your
literary rights or your film rights, rather than what's best
(27:42):
for your client. And you're supposed to be looking out
for your client at all times.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
The case was still going on, you can't do that.
We didn't want to make it public, but I told
Ed that he couldn't stay on the case.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
I was terminated from the case, and what funds were
paid initially for the life rights didn't go to the case,
and eventually Jodie Foster decided not to make the movie,
so it never generated very much. So that's when we
parted ways. Right at that same time, my daughter was born,
(28:20):
my first child, and I was happy to stay home
and take care of my daughter and try to forget
about sugarcane.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
That's hard to do it when you have a row
of sugar cane growing in your backyard.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Well, I didn't forget about it completely. It's a very
pretty plan. I had other things in my life other
than sugarcane for once, and people healed.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So Edward gets kicked off the case. By now, it's
the early two thousands. The lawyers have been working on
these class actions for some fifteen year years and it
had all come to nought. But there was still one
chance to prevail, one chance to get the workers their
back wages. The final jury trial, the one against Osiola.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
The Ostiola case was on life support.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
The farm is owned by the fun Holes, so it's
not going to be an easy fight here. Greg officially
joins the legal team, and he and Dave decide to
shift their tactics completely.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
We decided that since we were not getting anywhere. You know,
it's like the definition of insanity, of course, is to
keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
While they're at it, let's step back a little.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The amount of off and out of the courtroom drama.
In this case, it was an epic canvas of American life.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
So next time, we've got our journalistic shovel ready because
we're digging further into things going on in the periphery
of this case, things that bring to focus the power
of Big sugar in America, not just in terms of
legislation and migrant workers, but also something even more personal
to you, how the industry has transformed the very food
(30:12):
you eat.
Speaker 8 (30:13):
It's been behind closed doors, you know, they really have
had a strategy to influence the public.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
We tag along with a dentist turned detective who uncovered
the industry's crackedy pr strategies.
Speaker 8 (30:27):
Maybe it actually was a conspiracy, you know, behind the scenes.
It's something that we didn't know about.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
That's next time on Big Sugar.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
It's pretty astounding their power.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Big Sugar is produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions
and Novel for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me
Celeste Hendley. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at
Weekday Fund Productions. It's executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Chloke,
and Marie Brenner. Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler.
(31:08):
The researcher is Nadia Metti. Production management from Scherie Houston,
Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian.
Field reporting by Amber Amortigee. Sound design and mixing by
Eli Block, Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen. Original music composed
by Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by Nicholas Alexander.
(31:33):
Special thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author of the book Big Sugar,
and Stephanie Black, director of the documentary H two Worker.
Big Sugar is based on the Vanity Fair article in
the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Brenner
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