The plaintiffs are family members of trade unionists, banana workers, political organizers, social activists, and others targeted and killed by those organizations. Their claims follow more than a decade of related federal litigation, including a multidistrict proceeding in the Southern District of Florida that produced jury verdicts now on appeal before the Eleventh Circuit. After class certification was denied in the MDL in the 2007 New Jersey-filed case and after the MDL dismissed various claims on extraterritoriality and limitations grounds, the current plaintiffs filed twelve separate complaints in New Jersey Superior Court, Mercer County, each naming fewer than 100 plaintiffs.
Chiquita removed all twelve cases to the District of New Jersey on June 9, 2025, filing an amended notice of removal on June 24, 2025, asserting both diversity jurisdiction and CAFA mass-action jurisdiction. Judge Georgette Castner consolidated the cases for briefing purposes and, on February 25, 2026, granted the plaintiffs' motion to remand on both grounds.
On the forum-defendant rule, Chiquita argued the plaintiffs had waived the rule's protection through their extensive prior participation in federal litigation. Because Chiquita is incorporated in New Jersey, removal based on diversity was procedurally barred unless that protection was waived. Applying a four-factor framework drawn from Patel v. Smith — examining the length of time before the remand motion, use of federal court processes, pursuit of affirmative federal relief, and equitable considerations — Judge Castner held that no waiver occurred. The court emphasized that 167 of the 826 plaintiffs had never filed suit in the District of New Jersey, and over 40 had never filed any federal complaint against Chiquita at all. Plaintiffs indicated their intent to seek remand within days of the amended removal notice, and the court found no bad faith comparable to the tolling-agreement violation that drove the waiver finding in the Middle District of Pennsylvania's Sorin decision.
On CAFA, Chiquita argued the plaintiffs could not escape mass-action jurisdiction by splitting what had been a larger federal proceeding into twelve sub-100-plaintiff state complaints. Judge Castner disagreed. Under the Third Circuit's Ramirez v. Vintage Pharmaceuticals framework, CAFA mass-action jurisdiction requires a proposal — explicit or implicit — to try claims jointly. The court held that filing twelve separate complaints with fewer than 100 plaintiffs each was precisely the structural choice the Third Circuit identified as sufficient to insulate plaintiffs from CAFA jurisdiction. Chiquita's attempt to impute a joint-trial proposal from the plaintiffs' prior MDL conduct failed on two grounds: many current plaintiffs were never MDL parties, and Ramirez looks to conduct after the complaint is filed, not to pre-filing history in separate proceedings.
The court declined to award attorney's fees, concluding that while Chiquita's removal arguments were unpersuasive, they were not objectively unreasonable under the standard set by Martin v. Franklin Corp.
The cases now return to New Jersey Superior Court, Mercer County. The source packet notes that the precise state-law claims asserted in the current complaints have not been independently confirmed; the 2020 New Jersey-filed complaint, as described by the Eleventh Circuit in Garcia v. Chiquita Brands International, included claims such as wrongful death, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and material support to terrorist organizations under New Jersey law, but whether the current complaints assert an identical claim list has not been verified. The Eleventh Circuit's review of the MDL jury verdicts, argued January 30, 2026, proceeds on a parallel track.