Dole Food...told a California judge that lawsuits by purported Nicaraguan banana-farm workers who claim they became sterile from pesticides are fraudulent. Lawyers in Nicaragua recruited poor people who had never worked on a banana farm to file complaints, took them on field trips to farms, trained them to lie convincingly and faked lab tests and employment records, Dole’s lawyer Scott Edelman said yesterday at a hearing in state court in Los Angeles... After the first U.S. trial over the use of the pesticide in 2007,...evidence emerged of witness-intimidation and obstruction of justice, the judge said... Nicaraguan courts have entered more than $2 billion in verdicts against Dole and other U.S. companies that plaintiffs’ lawyers are seeking to have enforced in U.S. courts... “We are shocked and saddened at the allegations against third parties in this case, including our former co-counsel,” Michael Axline, a lawyer who represents the Nicaraguan plaintiffs, said at the hearing.