Plan Colombia Litigation Resolved With Settlement
IRAdvocates is delighted to announce that their clients in Quinteros, et al., v. DynCorp, et al., Case No. 1:07-cv-01042 (ESH) reached a final settlement of their claims with the DynCorp defendants. This case was first filed in 2001 and involved the controversial fumigations of Plan Colombia. The more than 2,000 individual Plaintiffs are all farmers and fishermen who live on the Ecuador side of the Colombia-Ecuador border. They filed suit against DynCorp, the contractor that implemented the coca eradication fumigations in Colombia on behalf of the U.S. Department of State. The Plaintiffs all claimed that the fumigant used in the program, a version of glyphosate, either was sprayed directly on them or drifted across the border and damaged their crops, their livestock, and caused them health problems. The case presented many complex legal issues, including whether DynCorp was immune from suit because it was a government contractor, the degree of control the company had over the fumigation plans, and the extent of damages suffered by the Plaintiffs that was attributable to the Plan Colombia fumigations. The confidential settlement reached was on behalf of all Plaintiffs.
The IRAdvocates initiated the case in 2001, and was joined in 2017 by Ted Leopold, Leslie Mitchell Kroeger, and Poorad Razavi, all with one of the country’s top Plaintiffs’ litigation firms, Cohen ,Milstein, Sellers & Toll, PLLC.
Terry Collingsworth, Executive Director of IRAdvocates, stated “no amount of compensation would be sufficient, but we are very pleased that due to strong advocacy by the Plaintiffs themselves, through FORCCOFESEC, an Ecuadoran organization made of victims of the fumigations, Plan Colombia fumigations were terminated in 2015. We hope that all of our clients can resume their lives and live in peace.”