Case 0:08-md-01916-KAM Document 856 Entered on FLSD Docket 07/26/2015 Page 1 of 8

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
CASE NO. 08-MD-01916-MARRA

IN RE: CHIQUITA BRANDS INTERNATIONAL, INC.,

ALIEN TORT STATUTE AND
SHAREHOLDER DERIVATIVE LITIGATION
______________________________________________/
This Document Relates To:
ATS ACTIONS
______________________________________________/
DOE PLAINTIFFS' RESPONSE TO
DEFENDANT CHIQUITAS TIME-SENSITIVE MOTION
TO MODIFY REQUESTS FOR JUDICIAL ASSISTANCE
The Doe Plaintiffs respresented by Attorney Wolf (hereinafter "Doe Plaintiffs")
join in Chiquita's Motion in part, oppose it in part, and ask the Court to modify the
proposed request for judicial assistance to take the deposition of Fredy Rendon Herrera.1
The Doe Plaintiffs agree that the depositions should be postponed until other
plaintiffs' counsel comply with the Court's May 5, 2015 Order on Discovery. See Order
Sustaining in Part & Overruling in Part Plaintiffs Objections to Defendants Discovery
Requests Regarding Witness Payment Issues, R. 797. Although undersigned counsel
fully complied with the Court's Order, the other counsel did little more than make
objections to what we produced, not even searching for responsive documents. We have
already gotten Mr. Collingsworth to admit to the conspiracy to pay Raul Hasbun, and to
making payments to go-betweens to Salvatore Mancuso, both important AUC

The Doe Plaintiffs take no position on the arrangements for the depositions of Jess Ignacio Roldn or
Jos Gregorio Mangones Lugo. We have no knowledge about Mr. Roldn and nothing to contribute to his
deposition. We have already expressed our concerns about Mr. Mangones and would not want to be
involved in taking his deposition.

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commanders. From our perspective, it is not counterproductive to point out these issues,
but a necessary step in the progress of the case.
The judicial request was poorly crafted the first time, and should be modified to
allow for more time. However, it still contains provisions that violate Colombian law, we
will be detailed below, and is vague in apportioning the time between Mr. Simons and
myself. For these reasons, we ask the Court to modify the proposed Request for Fredy
Rendon Herrera as shown in the attached reline version in Exhibit 1,2 and to delay the
Request until Attorneys Collingsworth, Simons and others comply with the Court's May
5, 2015 Order. The Court may also consider whether this can even be decided until
attorney work product issues are resolved by the 11th Circuit and the District Court for
the Northern District of Alabama.
1.

The Hague Convention Request to Fredy Rendon Herrera must be modified

to comply with Colombian law.
The Request to take Mr. Rendon's deposition violates Colombian law for a

number of reasons. First, it's a violation of Mr. Rendon's rights to interrogate him outside
of the presence of a judge. Second, it violates his rights to interrogate him in a foreign
language through an interpreter, with an official English record. We have raised these
issues with Mr. Simons and Mr. Hall, who agreed with each other to conduct the
deposition in English and outside of the presence of a Colombian judge. This is a formal
judicial proceeding in Colombia, and the prison in Itagi has procedures for
accomodating it.

A Colombian judge is present, and Colombian attorneys enter

appearances. By law, the proceeding must be in Spanish.

Changes made to Sections 13 and 15 are indicated in red. This isn't meant to be a final version, which we
can provide at the Court's request.

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Mr. Simons and Mr. Hall want to ask Mr. Rendon questions in English through an
interpreter, and bring a court interpreter from the United States into the prison, to create
an official English language record, and to exclude the Colombian judge. We don't know
if Mr. Rendon has an attorney, but all of this would be highly irregular.
It is in Mr. Rendon's interest to assert his right not to incriminate himself. To the
best of our knowledge, Attorney Collingsworth has not been working with him, and he
has no reason to want to testify. Rendon's plea agreement required him to tell the "whole
truth" in his criminal proceedings, and if he testifies about things he didn't mention
before, a Colombian judge could find that he had not told the whole truth in his criminal
case. The reason we are taking is deposition because of concerns that Rendon will soon
be released from prison after serving the eight year sentence in his plea agreement.
Therefore, we don't think the deposition will produce useful testimony unless it is in a
judicial setting with a Colombian judge. Conducting the deposition in English will result
in the witness misunderstanding the questions to some degree, and introduce ambiguity
and error into the testimony. It's doubtful a Colombian court would allow the deposition
as requested, so the request should be modified to comply with Colombian law.
2.

The Doe Plaintiffs represented by undersigned counsel should have an

opportunity to ask questions of Fredy Rendon Herrera.
Mr. Simons has yet to explain why he believes Fredy Rendon Herrera is an

important witness in his case. It appears that Rendon was selected because there has been
media interest and controversy about Rendon's release from prison, which is said to be

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imminent.3

However, Mr. Rendon's role in the case is not obvious and needs

explanation.
Fredy Rendon Herrera was the commander of the Elmer Cardenas Block ("BEC")
of the AUC. The BEC had a territory in Urab that was separate from the Banana Block,
which was comprised of two fronts, the Arlex Hurtado Front led by Raul Hasbun, and the
Turbo Front led by Ever Veloza Garcia ("HH"). The territory of the Banana Block
included the major urban centers of Apartado, Turbo, Chigorodo, and nearby areas. The
Elmer Cardenas Block was formed in Necocli, which is about 15 miles north of Turbo,
and was where the top leadership of the AUC, called the Casa Castao, was based.4
With the assistance of men and arms from Turbo (the BEC had one unit called the
Pedro Ponte front, a reference to Raul Hasbun), Fredy Rendon launched a military
campaign from Acandi to Riosucio, which are on the other side of the Gulf of Uraba in
the Department of Choco. The BEC then controlled the town of Dabeiba,5 where more
than 500 of our cases occurred. The BEC and Banana Block both conducted operations
in bordering areas such as Mutata, where Vicente Castano is said to have lived. In other
words, the BEC operated in areas surrounding the part of Uraba where bananas are
grown. The banana-growing area was controlled by the Banana Block of Hasbun and
Ever Veloza.

In Mr. Rendon's case in Colombia, the trial court found that Mr. Rendon had not complied with the terms
of his demobilization agreement and that none of the time he had already served would count against his
eight year sentence. This was reversed on appeal, and Mr. Rendon is currently back in an obviously hostile
trial court. If he is released, he will have to meet with a parole officer on an approximately biweekly basis
for approximately two years, which is how the other AUC members released from prison have been treated.
4
It was no coincidence that Fredy Rendon's brother, "Don Mario" was captured in Necocli. It was the last
stronghold of the BEC, although Don Mario's men gave him up in the end.
5
Mr. Simons and the other plaintiffs counsel do not have a significant number of cases from Dabeiba. It is
a small town where one of my assistants lived.

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Unlike Ever Veloza though, Fredy Rendon has not generally taken responsibility
for the crimes committed by the BEC.6 For this reason, we wrote to the attorney general
of Colombia on Aug. 27, 2014, urging that Mr. Rendon not be released until he confesses
all of his crimes. We believe that one issue is the degree of overlap between the BEC and
members of the Colombian army and police. For example, for many years it has not been
possible to obtain autopsy reports from Medicina Legal, the Colombian government
forensic agency, due to a confidential government investigation. Dabeiba was one of the
FARC's strongholds in Colombia, second only to San Vicente del Caguan. Nevertheless,
no matter how inconvenient the subject, it is important to the victims that the truth be told
about the thousands of murders that occured in their home town of Dabeiba.
Thousands of persons from Dabeiba and nearby towns have filed claims in the
Commission of Justice and Paz, including our nearly all of our clients from Dabeiba. Mr.
Simons and his co-counsel have cases originating in other parts of Colombia. Simons'
team also lacks personal experience interviewing clients affected by the BEC, and insist
on taking Mr. Rendon Herrera's deposition in English, presumably because they are not
able to do so on Spanish. Mr. Simons seeks to exclude me, and my clients, from
participating in this deposition entirely. We have already been prejudiced by the harm
done to Raul Hasbun, who is probably the most important witness in this case. We're
concerned that Mangones Lugo fits the mold of the witnesses in the Drummond case.
My clients have already suffered extreme prejudice from what we view as a RICO
conspiracy among the other plaintiff's counsel, in this case as well as in Dole and

I attended a week's worth of Mr. Rendon Herrera's testimony in his criminal case. The Colombian court
erased his answer when I asked him about his brother Don Mario, as I described in my Responses to
Defendant's Interrogatories. R. 771 at 10-11. I would like to follow up on that.

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Drummond. The Court should not allow these attorneys to represent the interests of my
clients, in the Rendon deposition or elsewhere.
3.

Witness payment discovery should be produced before the witness

depositions are taken.
We agree with the Defendant that the other plaintiffs' counsel have not complied

with the Court's order and should be compelled to produce discovery material relevant to
payments to witnesses. See Defendant Chiquitas Time-Sensitive Motion to Compel
Compliance with the Courts May 5 Discovery Order, and Request for Expedited
Briefing Schedule. R. 837. As the Court already recognized, the defendants should be
allowed an opportunity to conduct discovery on the witness payment issue, under an
accelerated schedule, before the paramilitary witnesses are deposed in this case. R. 759
at 12.
On July 21, 2015, Marco Simons of Earthrights International produced to me
approximately a dozen documents, which according to Mr. Simons, is the same as what
he produced to Chiquita pursuant to the Court's May 5, 2015 Order. It only took a few
minutes to determine that Simons had not even searched for responsive materials, but
only made objections to what I had produced, and maintains that this is all that is required
of him. His position, and that of the others, is that all of the work done by lawyers in
these firms enjoys blanket work product privilege protection. Simons even asserts my
own privilege, which I have obviously waived, for a series of emails to the chiquita-atsall mailing list in which I accuse them of tainting Raul Hasbun as a witness. I also recall
expressing my concerns about Jos Gregorio Mangones Lugo, who is one of the
witnesses is subject to the Request for Judicial Assistance at hand.

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The RICO conspiracy has been known to counsel in the Chiquita case since I
complained about it at a meeting at Cohen Millstein Sellers & Toll in June of 2011, and
then in various emails until I was removed from the group. Unfortunately, I lost all my
email correspondence from this period when my provider icdc.com unexpectedly went
out of business. However, Mr. Collingsworth, Mr. Simons, and the other attorneys
receiving Requests for Production from Chiquita should all have copies of the emails
from this list, as well as any other correspondence they may have had. Mr. Scarola and
Mr. Collingsworth both maintain that the witness payment issue was "resolved"
sometime after they stopped communicating with me, and stress that I do not know how
it was resolved. This implies that they have had further communications on this subject.
Although I was not privy to discovery conversations between Chiquita and the other
plaintiffs, the listserve should be searched for keywords such as witness names, and Mr.
Simons and the others should produce any documents relevant to payments to them.7
Finally the Court should be aware of the context in which Chiquita's discovery
requests for witness payment evidence are occurring.

Drummond has two pending

motions for sanctions, and an evidentiary hearing set for September 1-3, 2015, for
Collingsworth's alleged misrepresentations to the court about witness payments and the
number of witnesses paid, and about Collingsworth's alleged spoliation of electronic
evidence. Dole will soon be serving me with a subpeona for the materials that the Court
is now reviewing in camera. Collingsworth has announced plans to take depositions of
about a dozen top level AUC leaders in the Dole case. The witness payments have been
an ongoing problem that requires a more direct intervention from the courts.

The Court has not allowed discovery of alleged payments to witnesses in the Drummond and Dole cases,
except perhaps in the case of Mangones Lugo, who testified in the Dole case as well.

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Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, the Court should grant Chiquita's Motion but amend
the Hague Convention Request for Fredy Rendon Herrera as shown in Exhibit 1. The
Doe Plaintiffs represented herein also nun pro tunc join in Chiquita's Rul 37 Motion to
Compel witness payment discovery.
Respectfully submitted,
/s/
_______________________
Paul Wolf, CO Bar 42107
PO Box 46213
Denver CO 80201
(202) 431-6986
paulwolf@yahoo.com

July 26, 2015

Certificate of Service
I hereby certify that on this 26th day of July, 2015, I electronically filed the
foregoing Doe Plaintiffs' Response to Defendant Chiquitas Time-Sensitive Motion to
Modify Requests for Judicial Assistance and Exhibit with the Clerk of Court using the
CM/ECF system which will send notification of such filing to all parties entitled to
receive such notice.
/s/ Paul Wolf
____________________
Paul Wolf