Chiquita Held Liable for Deaths During Colombian Civil War

threatened by the paramilitaries. Executives and employees, defense lawyers said, were being extorted by the self-defense forces and made payments to ensure their safety.

“The situation in Colombia was tragic for so many,” Chiquita officials said in a statement. “However, that does not change our belief that there is no legal basis for these claims.”

Lawyers representing the families declined to provide many details about their clients’ stories outside of court, citing concerns for their safety. But Mr. Simons of EarthRights International cited other cases filed in U.S. courts against Chiquita that he said showed similar patterns of violence, including killing family members in front of relatives.

In one case, an unidentified girl was traveling to a farm by taxi with her mother and stepfather when they were stopped by gunmen, he said. The men executed the stepfather and then fatally shot the mother as she tried to run away. They then gave the girl the equivalent of 65 cents to take a bus back to town.

Chiquita, which was formerly known as the United Fruit Company, is also a defendant in a suit filed in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, asserting that payments Chiquita made to the United Self-Defense Forces rose to involvement in criminal activities.

“The name Chiquita resonates in the recent history of the country,” said Sebastián Escobar Uribe, one of the lawyers in the Medellín suit. “When you investigate a corporation with significant financial muscle in a country like Colombia, the judicial system is vulnerable to being co-opted by that company.”

In the United States, it is unusual to hold a corporation financially liable for human rights violations beyond the country’s borders, said James Anaya, who teaches international human rights at the University of Colorado Law School.

The lawsuit that resulted in the South Florida verdict had been winding its way through the court system since it was filed in 2007 and withstood several legal challenges to reach a trial.

“It’s not impossible for these cases to happen,” Mr. Anaya said. “There’s certainly a path for them.”

But, he added: “It’s not common. Everything has to fall into place.”

Human rights advocates in Colombia lauded the jury’s verdict.

Gerardo Vega, the former director of Colombia’s National Land Agency, which is responsible for returning land to people who were displaced by force, said in a video statement that the ruling was a vindication of the fight against impunity in the United States.

“The Colombian justice system should also act,” Mr. Vega said. “We need Colombian judges to convict the businesspeople who, just like Chiquita, were paying” paramilitary groups.

Raquel Sena, the widow of a farmworker who was killed in the banana-producing region, said in an interview with a Colombian radio station that the United Self-Defense Forces had killed him after he refused to sell them his plot of farmland.

“I’m never going to overcome his death,” she said in a video posted on X. “We want Chiquita Brands to acknowledge us because they’re the ones who paid for people to get killed here.”

A correction was made on 

June 11, 2024

: 

An earlier version of this article misstated when the anecdote of the killing a girl traveling to a farm was provided. It was provided by a lawyer outside court and it involved a different case. It was not described in court nor was it part of the case in South Florida.