Florida Fourth DCA rejects Jamaican cane cutter challenge to cash appeal bond requirement

Daily Business Review ^ | September 1, 2010 | John Pacenti

[Rockingham]

4th DCA kills cane cutters’ appeal over wages

Sugar cane cutters’ 21-year effort to sue for back wages hit another roadblock Wednesday when the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a decision requiring each worker to post a $100 bond to sue in small claims court.

A split three-judge panel ruled a Palm Beach Circuit appellate panel acted within its discretion when workers challenged a section of the 1838 state Constitution requiring nonresidents to post the bond when filing lawsuits.

The decision is just the latest setback for farmworkers trying to sue for back wages since 1989.

About 1,500 workers, mostly residents of Jamaica and other Caribbean countries, originally sued in a class action, which was subsequently decertified. Suing individually, each worker was required to pay a $100 bond to get into small claims court. That fee was challenged as an improper bar to court access for indigent plaintiffs. . . .

[Rockingham]

This case was decided on an appellate court jurisdictional issue, but it is a major defeat for a back wages claim by a large group of Jamaican cane cutters. Florida's business community is pleased with the result, which effectively upholds a $100 cash bond requirement for foreign plaintiffs in Florida small claims court.

[rahbert]

Basicially it means that employers can rip off cane cutters
of their lawfully earned with impunity.

Florida’s buisness community should be ashamed of itself
patting itself on the back over this.

[Rockingham]

You assume both that the cane cutters' case is meritorious and that long established rules should be waived so that they can pursue it on preferential terms. Neither point has been shown to be true.

To the contrary, it is plausible that the case on the merits is weak and was ginned up by an alliance between immigrant advocates and plaintiff lawyers expecting a settlement. Notably, the plaintiffs' lawyers have not advanced their clients the cost of appeal bonds -- which suggests lack of confidence in the merits.

[Lurker]

You can make a hundred bucks setting up a car wash over a weekend.

[rahbert]

I would want to do this why?

[Lurker]

I didn’t mean you. I just find it hard to believe that since 1989 none of these Plaintiffs have been able to save $100 to post the required bond.

[rahbert]

Its also plausible that the cutter’s case is
meritorious based on long-standing observation of how
unjust farmers in a position to take advantage of
itinerant workers usually do so. The plaintiff attorneys
are making a decision based on their own self interest
based on the likelyhood of the workers case prevailing at trial.

For decades farmers have ripped off migrant workers,
and courts have never shown an inclination to rule
against the farmers. Mostly this tells me that the FL
legal system is an ugly racist little plantation, similar to that of the farmers.

Same old story - crooked legal system, powerless and penniless workers being taken advantage of, farmers
operating as in the days of the Oakies and the Joads.

[Rockingham]

Sometimes, the world moves past the old stories, and the old Edward R. Morrow story "Harvest of Shame" is one of them.

Federal and state agencies, nonprofit groups, and newspapers monitor migrant worker wages, hours, and working conditions. Migrant workers have won a number of legal and political victories. But they do not and cannot be expected to win them all.