A California judge on Thursday tossed out a $2.4 million judgment against Dole Food Co won by six Nicaraguans claiming pesticide injuries in what the judge branded a phony case invented as part of a larger fraud conspiracy. The November 2007 verdict she overturned...capped the first of dozens of such cases brought in California by workers from several Central American countries to go to trial. The others, from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Honduras, have been thrown into greater doubt as well. Thursday's decision...also undermines $2 billion in pending judgments from dozens of similar cases won by plaintiffs in Nicaraguan courts and now seeking enforcement against Dole in the United States, lawyers for both sides said... His clients, like plaintiffs who sued and won in Nicaragua, claimed they were made sterile by the chemical DBCP, which was banned in the United States but used by Dole in other countries...on banana plantations.