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Legal Proceedings | 6 Months Ended
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Jun. 30, 2014
Legal Proceedings | 12. Legal Proceedings—Summarized below are litigation matters in which there has been material activity or developments during the three month period ended June 30, 2014. A. DBCP Cases—Delaware A number of suits have been filed against AMVAC, alleging injury from exposure to the agricultural chemical 1, 2-dibromo-3-chloropropane (“DBCP®”). DBCP was manufactured by several chemical companies, including Dow Chemical Company, Shell Oil Company and AMVAC, and was approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) to control nematodes. DBCP was also applied on banana farms in Latin America. The USEPA suspended registrations of DBCP in October 1979, except for use on pineapples in Hawaii. The USEPA suspension was partially based on 1977 studies by other manufacturers that indicated a possible link between male fertility and exposure to DBCP among their factory production workers involved with producing the product. There are approximately 100 lawsuits, foreign and domestic, filed by former banana workers in which AMVAC has been named as a party. Fifteen of these suits have been filed in the United States (with prayers for unspecified damages) and the remainder has been filed in Nicaragua. All of these actions are in various stages and allege injury from exposure to DBCP, including claims for sterility. Except for the cases described below, there have been no material developments in these matters since the filing of the Company’s Form 10-Q for the period ended March 30, 2014. In what has been designated as the remaining Hendler-Delaware cases (involving claims for physical injury arising from alleged exposure to DBCP over the course of the late 1960’s through the mid-1980’s on behalf of about 2,700 banana plantation workers from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and Panama – more fully described in the Company’s Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2013), on May 27, 2014, the district court granted defendant Dole’s motion to dismiss the matter without prejudice on the grounds that the applicable statutes of limitation had expired. In reaching its finding, the court noted that while the Delaware Supreme Court in Blanco had established that Delaware now recognizes the concept of cross-jurisdictional tolling, the factual question as to the tolling of the statute had not been decided by the Blanco court. The court in the Hendler – Delaware cases found that, in fact, the applicable statute of limitations had stopped in 1995. The court left open the possibility that plaintiffs could bring forward evidence that they did not know of their injuries and the causes thereof until a later date, but went on to note that such a showing might be difficult given that many of the symptoms identified by plaintiffs (e.g., vision loss, skin conditions and gastrointestinal problems) are of an obvious nature. B. Other Matters AMVAC has been named as one of 46 defendants in an action entitled Mark Spence v. A.W. Chesterton Company et al. which was filed on June 16, 2014 with the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois as case number 2014L006394 in which plaintiff alleges to have developed mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos-containing products while working as a construction and lawn care laborer in Illinois over the period 1968 to 1990. Among a laundry list of pipe covers, gaskets, roof shingles and construction materials, plaintiff alleges that he was also exposed to unnamed products of AMVAC including “asbestos contaminated fertilizers, herbicides and other horticultural products.” The Company is unaware of having ever sold any product or packaging that incorporated asbestos and believes that this claim has no merit. We plan to defend the matter vigorously. The Company believes that a loss is neither probable nor reasonably estimable and has not established a loss contingency for the matter.

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- Definition The entire disclosure for legal proceedings, legal contingencies, litigation, regulatory and environmental matters and other contingencies. + References No definition available. + Details
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