Big Sugar Episode 3: The Case That Consumed Them

We now stop at a fish stand and Edward is negotiating to buy two boiled lobsters from a guy who has cooked glovesters sitting on a milk crate in front of a little beer stand.

We opened in the late nineteen nineties, when lawyer Edward Tuttenham is in Jamaica with another attorney, Sarah Cleveland.

All right, and you get king fish, and all right, I'll come back.

So how had Edward and Sarah met well through work? It was because of this sugarcane case that Edward was working on. Sarah was just starting out in her career in public law, and she turned up to watch this interview that Edward was doing with his co counsul Jim Green. Maybe she could learn a thing or two.

I met her, I guess the first time at this deposition.

I do recall her coming back to me with the odd questions. She said, well, I had a wonderful time, and I'm trying to figure out myself who should I date? Jim Green or Edward Tutnham.

That's her boss from the time at greg Shall. He'd heard some less than five star reviews about Edward from his previous girlfriends. So he suggested Sarah date the other lawyer, Jim oh And and he.

Was not currently engaged, which Edward was engaged in buying house with his fiance.

But despite his pending marital status, Sarah was still drawn to Edward.

Edward is just charming.

If you meet him, he is just charming, very debonair dashing.

And the thing is Edward and Sarah had a lot in common. They were both representing farm workers sugarcane cutters, but in different cases, so like a budding stock of sugarcane, their relationship grew. Edward eventually broke it off with his fiance, and as the years rolled on, Sarah even went with Edward to Jamaica to interview people for Edward's case. We've got old dictaphone recordings from their journeys which sound like the public law version of an Indiana Jones.

We're now climbing on a one lane, very rocky dirt road in jungle.

Literally that's basically dark. I don't know if you can hear the rattles of the jeep, but it is found joints that it never knew that it had.

They were every great Hollywood movie of two people united in a common.

Cause, journalist Marie Brenner.

Like lovers coming together when their world was coming apart to fight this great cause.

We're now passing somebody's farm and planted among the boulders are a couple of pie trees and sugarcane and what looks like elephant ears.

We went regularly to Jamaica to take testimony, to find clients, to investigate potential witnesses, and we had a trip plan and as long as we were going to Jamaica, we decided to get married on that trip. We quickly invited thirty of our friends had a wedding.

Not only had they met because of sugarcane, bonded because of sugarcane, taken romantic sojourns because of sugarcane.

It turned out, you guys got married on a sugar plantation.

Yeah, well, a eighteenth century sugar plantation.

When we left off in the last episode, lawyers Edward Tuttenham and Dave Gorman had decided to sue the Florida sugar industry's biggest companies, alleging that they'd underpaid thousands of Jamaican cane cutters over decades. Their legal theory seemed irrefutable, and it looked like an unlosable case. But what started as a quick strike morphed into something altogether different, something that expanded and compounded and rapidly hijacked the lives of almost everyone involved.

I mean, it wasn't just Sarah and edwards relationship. The case began to sort of take over these lawyers' lives. I mean, is that fair to say?

Oh completely.

I'm Celeste Hedley and from iHeartMedia, Imagine Audio and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel. This is Big Sugar Episode three, the case that consumed them. On the surface, what happened in nineteen ninety two wasn't particularly thrilling, even according to Edward, who was at the center of it all.

It's not terribly entertaining to watch. It's not riveting stuff.

So here they are. Lawyers Edward Tuttenham and Dave Gorman have just entered the Palm Beach County Courthouse, a brand spanking new building, its architecture rooted firmly and proudly in the nineteen nineties, leaning heavily on a color scheme of salmon and teal. They're therefore what's called a summary judgment. It's where a judge has to make a decision about their class action on behalf of the twenty thousand sugarcane cutters, should it go to trial or not.

The lawyers were there, the judge and her clerk. There might have been three or four people in the audience. Spouses of lawyers or farmer officials might have been there.

And the lawyers would come in and sit down on opposite sides of the table and present their arguments.

That's Attorney Dave Gorman again. So it wasn't a remarkable scene, but what's unfolding is pivotal. If the judge agrees with Dave and Edward, they're about to get a massive payout. If not, well they've got to go to trial, which would be a huge amount of work.

The case was assigned to this new young judge, Lucy Brown, who was just brilliant.

So first Dave sets out their argument, the argument he hopes the judge will agree with. In essence, the contract that was provided to the Department of Labor on behalf of the sugar companies guaranteed the sugar cane cutters five dollars and thirty cents per ton of cane they cut, but they were actually paid a lot less than that, So all these cutters are entitled to back wages.

The original argument was pretty civil and it was pretty straightforward. If I'm expected to cut eight tons in an eight hour day, and I have to cut fast enough to keep my job, that's a ton an hour. That means a ton an hour has to be good enough, and I have to get paid five thirty minimum for that hour, which means I got to get paid five thirty if I do the satisfactory. A one ton per hour to me is pretty easy logic.

Look, that is a lot of math to do in your head, so don't worry if you haven't totally nailed the legal argument yet. Just know that Dave and Edward are saying the workers were entitled to be paid five dollars thirty cents per ton of sugar cane they cut, as per the contract, but the companies had been paying closer to three dollars seventy cents per ton.

There are some people who figure it out in thirty seconds. All you have to do is say they got to earn five thirty an hour. One ton an hour is good enough, what's the minimum they have to pay. And some people like instantly it just comes to them. Yeah, other people you can explain it for hours. It just never quite penetrating. Judge Brown got it, she got it very quickly.

Then come the lawyers on the other side, the lawyers representing the cane companies. They say, no, this wasn't the agreement. And you know what, these other lawyers are just in it for the money.

I mean, I've dealt with lawyers who are obnoxious, but this was like a class warfare case.

So the arguments continue on.

We had an all day hearing with the judge where we simply said, you know, there's nothing to have a trial of that. This is the contract, this is what it says, this is what they pay. We win. And the judge we had she looked at the contract and she said, you're absolutely right, you win.

Just like that, and she agreed with that argument and she ruled in our favor.

What was your reaction when you heard the judgment.

I was thrilled.

I was thrilled.

This wasn't even the best part. Then there was the money, the amount that was going to be paid to the cutters and the lawyers. Dave got a letter informing them of just how much they were owed.

The judge issued an order that she just put in the mail, and he was just opening up his mail one day, and sure enough, there it was, and.

That calculated out to a total fifty one plus million dollar judgment.

Fifty one million dollars. They'd done it. They had outsmarted the other side. They were even up for a national award.

They had essentially slain the giant. They had done this really remarkable, clever, clever case.

I remember going out that night to a local music venue in Austin, buying drinks for everybody at the bar, something I'd always wanted to do.

It was a moment in the sun. The sugar cane cutters were going to have their back wages paid, the lawyers were going to personally profit to the tune of millions, and the perfect pursuit of justice seemed possible in the drunken haze of that Texas beer hall.

Of course, it was wonderful, but it wasn't really surprising, because number one, how could we possibly lose? But then that was appealed, and that's when everything went south very quickly.

Of course, the sugarcane companies appealed this was a big loss after all. So the lawyers are back in a courtroom, a few beads of sweat starting to form on their brows.

The appeals are always to a three judge court.

First up, the sugar king companies make their arguments that the contract was ambiguous. It's not clear what the contract means, so they need a trial.

The law professor representing the sugar companies went first, and he got a very approving response from the judges.

Then Dave makes his rebuttal.

Dave got up, and the hostility from particularly Martha Warner, was really talk about shocking.

This was a different court with different judges. They weren't as receptive to the lawyer's theory as the previous judge. And as you'll come to hear, some people agreed with the theory, some didn't.

Eventually I got up and I told Dave to sit down. Let me try. I argued desperately and strenuously enough to at least give the judges pause. I don't think I convinced any of them, but at least they kind of backed off a little bit.

For Edward and Dave, it was a disaster. From their perspective, it seemed like the judges didn't accept their five dollars thirty cents per ton argument.

At the end of that hearing, I was blown away. I could not believe how hostile the court was to what really in the end, was nothing more complicated than two and two equals four.

So then the judge's decision came down.

What the court said in their appellate decision was that the contract was ambiguous, that it might offer a ton an hour, but it might not, and therefore a jury has to decide what the contract means.

Edward and Dave, I mean, they're stunned. To them the contract was not ambiguous and their argument was air tight. We did ask Martha Warner about her decision. Why did the judges make this call, but she said she didn't have anything more to add beyond what she wrote back in the nineties.

I remember being crushed. I had just had a fifty ffty one million dollar judgment, which would have paid me probably a couple million bucks in fees or more taken away. I've never been able to reconcile how the appellate court could do what they did. I really just have to say I can't do it. That was my loss of innocence. Frankly, as an attorney.

Like the Titanic, you've been ripped from stem to stern, but you don't initially realize just how badly you've been hurt. So the Court of Appeal's decision was definitely the Iceberg.

I mean, one would understand if you'd thrown up your hands at that point and said, I don't want nothing more to do with this case.

Well, I don't think I ever thought about that. It's not me if you commit to do something and then you do it, and it wasn't over.

It was far from over.

The case then got split into five different cases, one for each.

Company, the companies US Sugar, Sugarcane Growers co Op and three owned by billionaire Cuban exiles, the fun Houls, Okalanta, Oceola and Atlantic.

All five were then sent back for trial.

Not only had the fifty million dollar rug been pulled out from under them, Edward and Dave's work had quintupled. It wasn't one case. There were now five to fight, and no longer would they be presenting their dense legal argument to a judge a legal expert. They'd be presenting it to lay people, a jury, at.

That point, realizing the work that was going to be ahead of you, did you think let's let this one go?

Oh no, I mean you don't let a fifty million dollar case that you should win, you don't let it go. I have to say, that's when I began to worry.

More after the So, up until this point, the defense the Sugar King companies had been represented by a stable of hotshot lawyers and legal professors. But that was when the case was before a judge. Now they needed someone to wow the jury. They needed a showman.

I went down on my knees, looked up well Heaven, and I said, Lord, you tell me what to say to this.

Jury this morning. And of course the rest is history.

When talking about Willy Gary, it can be hard to distinguish fact from myth. So take what follows with a pinch or an entire handful of salt.

Willy Gary, he certainly projected it developed a life story. The life story has elements of truth, but it's not entirely true.

The legend goes that Willy Gary was born into a poor family, the sixth of eleven children. His early childhood was spent following the migrant farm work route in fact, the same path that the Jamaican migrant workers often took. Growing up, he said to have worked twelve hour days, sandwiching his school time with picking beans, corn, and cutting sugarcane. He more or less begged his way into college, sleeping on lounges in Shaw University's dormitories until they relented and

I have to fly over the very sugar cane fields where I worked as a kid, and man, it's you know, sometimes you get kind of teary eyed when you think about, you know, what you came through.

So it's the early nineteen nineties, and there are going to be five trials, one for each of the sugar cane companies, the sugar cane growers co op Us, Sugar Atlantic, Osceola, and Oklanta. Those last three are all owned by the same parent company, Florida Crystals. Florida Crystals is part of Fanholcore, a multi billion dollar corporation owned by the eponymous Cuban exiles. They've gotten more than enough cash to hire the likes

Yeah, Willie, Willy Bill, I probably ought to be careful what I say about him. Let's just say I don't hold him in high regard.

One point some people have made is that, of course, for the growers, it didn't hurt the optics to have a black former migrant worker, someone who literally used to do the same job as the cutters from the Caribbean on their side. That's what Greg Shell thought anyway.

That was sort of the point here that if the sugar companies hadn't been this bad to their black workers, and all their workers were black, why would Willie Gary throw in with the growers in addition to whatever skills will he brought to the table. It was that subtle message it was being conveyed.

Also on the defense side was Joe Clock of the high priced law firm Steele, Hector and Davis. He'd go on to make a name for himself nationally when he helped George Bush claim the presidency in the disputed two thousand election. Marie Brenner remembers meeting him when she was covering the case for Vanity Fair.

He was as slick as they could possibly be. He was as slick as a lawyer gets.

And then there was Elizabeth Dufrayne, who actually, once upon a time worked to defend farm workers, but now she was firmly entrenched on the corporate side, and the glinting aquamarine and diamond ring that sat on her finger was a testament to that. She bought it when she won a two hundred and twenty two million dollar settlement for Florida Power and Light.

She had started in the law as a total idealist, and then she went to work on the other side.

So the stage is sent. The sugar companies have brought out their star players. Both teams have assembled ready to rumble. It's nineteen ninety nine and we're on the eleventh floor of the West Palm Beach Courthouse. This is the trial against the farm Atlanta. You enter along with a journalist covering the case, Marie Brenner, and look on one side, sitting there are the lawyers representing the Sugar Kane companies.

Walking into the courtroom for the first time was a kind of exercise in visual melodrama because on one side of the courtroom were all the sugar people. There were the fonn holes.

Remember these are the guys, the super rich sugar barons who owned Domino Sugar, amongst others, and they owned the sugar farm on trial.

There were all the fawn hool wives and daughters and cousins with their beautiful designer suits and pastel colors for Florida and their stiletto heels. Their handsome lawyers with their thousand dollars out of shaycases and their polished robes.

Then you turn your head and look at the other side, at David Edward, the team of lawyers who are suing the sugarcane company. It was a contrast.

You literally had six guys with backpacks, and it was like looking at the granola team who had flown in from New Hampshire in South Florida.

Then enters Willy Gary.

I was outside the courthouse the day that Willie arrived, and I saw him drive up where he was driven up in a Bentley, and he got out with his incredible suit and the custom made crocodile shoes, and he walked in as if he didn't have a care in the world. He was a star.

Willy Gary sweeps into the courthouse and takes his seat at the defense table alongside a gaggle of high priced attorneys. Then the hubbub in the gallery, full of pastel linen suits and shoulder pads, quiets down and it begins. First up Dave. He's not looking at notes. He speaks directly to the jury. So here's what sense, according to the transcript we have, as.

You've heard in little bits and pieces this case is fundamentally about a breach of contract. We'll see. It's a story of people who are humble, hard working who came here from islands in the Caribbean, primarily Jamaica, for the opportunity to improve themselves in their lives for the families back home, even though it meant leaving their homes for four or five months at a time, coming here and working under some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions

And then it's time for the headliner. Willy Gary begins his opening.

I mean he had charisma. He began telling the jury how he used to pick corn in the fields. Now he lived in a huge mansion in Stuart, Florida. He was a big deal personal injury lawyer. He was an absolute visual treat.

We've got transcripts of the trial and Willy opened with a classic Willy opening. We know that not because we have audio recordings of the Atlantic trial, but we do. You have this tape of a speech he gave during an episode of Sixty Minutes.

I said, members of the jury, you know, I find it kind of strange of all this time that I've been waiting just to talk to y'all. Oh, I've just been waiting members of the jury to speak my piece.

It's borderline evangelical. He went on. What we are going to prove to you is that this is a frivolous lawsuit. We are going to prove that to you, members of the jury, flat out, it's not our job to do it. But I'm convinced. I have always said the truth. The truth will set you free. Then he talks about the family who owns the Atlantic Farm for over thirty seven years, Members of the jury, the Fanhole family has been working

He was a showman. He had the jury hanging on every word he said.

Mister Gary continues, members of the jury, why are we here. The evidence is going to show that no one was ever told they would be paid by the ton never never. Never. Workers came, they worked, supported their families. It was all going great all those years. We told you. The evidence is going to prove in this case that this is a case where someone is looking for something for nothing. That's what the evidence is going to be.

He understood it didn't really matter what you said, it was how you said it. Once Willie walked into the court, you could sit there and you could just think these guys don't have a chance.

More. After the break, now the trial is really underway. Edward and Dave start out again with their five dollars thirty cent spiel. They say that's the amount the cutters were owed per ton, but there's evidence that the cane cutters were only paid around three dollars a ton. It's like asking someone to run a fifteen mile marathon for minimum wage when really they wanted them to run a

We walk you through it. You're expected to cut a ton an hour. If you cut a ton an hour, you're a satisfactory worker.

Okay, sorry, let me take one step back to make sure I understand. The clearance order said we guarantee you five thirty an hour, right.

Right, because it had to because that was the minimum wage rate. You couldn't get visas without saying that.

But it was legal for the employer to say, but we only keep you employed if you're you're working at a certain rate.

Exactly of cutting exactly.

But that to me seems like you're not actually guaranteed five thirty an hour.

I wish you had been on the jury. The lawsuit is very simple. If you offer a worker a written contract that says you will be paid at least by thirty a ton, which is effectively what the contract said, then they have to pay that. And there is no defense that, oh, I didn't know I offered that, or I didn't know I was making them work harder. It's just you offered that, you got to pay that.

The way they made their argument, well to Marie, it wasn't the most gripping display.

Essentially, what I can tell you is that sitting in the courtroom was to be watching charts, charts and more charts, math and more math.

What we can do is multiply these four numbers appear on the chart by five dollars thirty cents. That's this this column here, and it shows for.

Each of the four they had gotten these whiteboards made at Kinko's, and they were divided up into graphs and squares.

The company is entitled to a credit for the build up pay because the men weren't earning five dollars thirty cents cutting on the task.

They were doing. Multiplication of what you got paid by the row and what you got paid by the ton. And I can remember sitting there thinking, hmm, I'm having a really hard time following this. And if I'm going to have a hard time following this, what's going to happen on that jury.

Yeah, let's be real here. This might have been a brilliant theory formulated in the minds of brilliant lawyers, but was it interesting hard No.

The jury I felt was lost.

So on the defense side, the sugarcane company side, well, the argument and what they asked witnesses was completely different. Willie Gary steps up.

What was Willy Gary's argument in that case?

Billy Gary's argue, there's a frivolous case. This is all about the lawyers trying to make money. That literally was his argument.

At one point, Willy Gary said, this is a frivolous lawsuit. Members of the jury, this is a lawsuit about somebody trying to get something for nothing, and there's no place for that in this society.

Witnesses talked about all kinds of things that really had nothing to do with the case. And Willie Gary, as I say, he was a showman. He was very good at drawing the jury's attention to himself and away from the witnesses who generally weren't saying anything worth listening to anyway.

But he did have another effective tactic.

He simply kept asking everyone who came on the stands, where you ever told that you were going to be paid by the hour? And so, of course none of them could say yes, because they really weren't told that.

He brings witness after witness, the supervisors, the cutters. Did anyone expect that they'd be paid five dollars thirty cents a ton? Everyone says no.

This defense that, well, we never actually read the contract. The workers never saw the contract. The employers claim they never saw the contract.

Greg and Marie said, this really hit the jury, this argument that no one saw or agreed to this contract that apparently entitled the workers to five dollars thirty cents a ton. It was merely something an independent agent wrote to secure farm worker visas with the Department of Labor.

Juries are full of lay people who have a common sense understanding of what a contract is, and the common sense of understanding the contract is parties agree on something, and there has to be an agreement between the parties, and that's what you enforce a contract. The problem with this case was that the theory the plans were pushing. The companies were required to pay a certain amount per ton of kane harvested. Nobody understood that to be the deal.

To be the deal.

So it didn't sound like it was a contract at all. How could it be a contract nobody knew what it was about or agreed to it. That doesn't make common sense.

The argument they were making seemed like a contradiction to any jury. The document that no workers saw is nonetheless legally binding. So this was something that was a very very arcane point that it was very hard for them to get point across. That the workers hadn't really signed off on this. You know, it was just a very frustrating, grinding trial.

And this was a long trial dragging on for weeks and a long case. By now, Edward and Dave had been working on it for ten years decade. In that time, they'd come up with the theory, launched the class action, had the summary judgment, fought appeal after appeal, and now they're trying to convince a jury. Sitting there at the plaintiff benches, the Atlantic trial ground on. Dave and Edward are thinking about everything they'd sunk into this case.

How were you guys funding the continued case? How are you paying for it.

Out of our own pockets? And then friends, I had friends who contributed money just out of a sense of justice, but mostly Dave and I funded it. The money I got when my grandmother died, I, you know, contributed to the case. I'm sure it was over one hundred thousand, But how much over the fifteen years, I have no earthly idea.

Edward moved into his garage, you know, surrounded by all these boxes. There were ninety crates of legal documents.

He even had sugarcane growing in his backyard so he could study it. So much of their lives orbited around these lawsuits. Of course, Edward was by this time married to Sarah, who he'd met through the case. Then there were all the trips to Jamaica to gather depositions and such.

We're trying to find.

A man named Beckford, the blue house, the white one.

Okay, thank you.

This was the other thing driving them on. The men they'd met, most of the former cutters they'd tracked down in Jamaica, had no idea about the case.

He's trying to get testimony to help the company and defeat the workers. That's here, So it's very important.

Don't talk to him.

I'm your lawyer. Believe it or not.

Most of these guys in Jamaica had stories of being underpaid, that the hours they actually worked wouldn't match up with what was on their tickets at the end of the day.

Did you ever look at your cane ticket and have you'd worked for full eight hours? But they put fewer hours on your cane tickets?

More after the break. So back in the courtroom, puncturing the fog of the experts in the math were the cutters, their personal stories. These were the men whom Dave and Edward had brought over from Jamaica to testify. And this was what it was all about, the heart of it all.

Willie gary Cross examined a fellow in the Atlantic trial, and Clinton James was a really good guy. We brought him up for the trial. He lives in Jamaica. He's on the witness stand and Willie's Cross examining him, and Willy says something like this, he goes, so, you know, if the pay was so bad, why did you keep coming back year after year after year? And Clinton responds, he says, well, he says, a quarter of a slice of bread is better than no bread at all, which

In his testimony on the stand, Clinton talks about where he lived in the barracks, and meanwhile, a tear slips out when he remembers it all eating rice every day. But then Willy brings it back to what this trial is all about. Did Clinton James ever understand that there was an agreement between the parties to pay by the ton? What did Clinton James say? He said, no, he'd never heard of it.

The workers one question, they didn't understand the theory. What they understood was they said, I don't think I got paid, right. I know I worked for more than I got paid, But that wasn't what the theory was about. And so the worker testimony also was at odds with what the theory they were asking the jury to adopt.

Was.

The jury retires, Dave and Edward feel like they'd done all they could. They don't know if the jury is going to agree with them. They're five dollars thirty cents a ton. Theory, this wasn't about the workers working for more than they got paid, though we'll return to that later. And keep in mind how much is on the line, millions of dollars for both the cutters and lawyers, plus all the work, money, and energy they'd sunk into this. Dave and Edward are praying it wasn't for nothing.

I was physically exhausted. I had been working seven days a week, twelve or thirteen hours a day for that whole period of time, including the weekends.

So they're sitting there awaiting the jury's decision, and time is passing. The jury still hasn't come back.

When they didn't come right back in and pour us out, you start to become optimistic. And the longer it goes, I figured, the better it was for us.

So they wait and look out the window of the courtroom.

The courtroom looked out toward the marina. You could see in the way distance you could see many boats, could see the ocean, and.

If you squinted, you could just make out a yacht, a massive yacht called Krilly who owned that luxury vessel. Well, the answer to that tells you a lot about what went down in this case, and it stretched far beyond the eleventh floor of the West Palm Beach Courthouse. The verdict wasn't in yet. There's even more to unpack before

They were rich boys in the Havana of the nineteen fifties. Their parents would have the Duke of Windsor and the Duchess of Windsor coming to stay with them.

It's an origin story of incredible wealth.

They were probably one of the richest families in Cuba.

And it's a story of revolution.

Suddenly it's the shooting and people are having to flee and run and run under cover, and run for the airport and run for boats and everyone is Fleeing.

Big Sugar is produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions and novel for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me Celeste Henley. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at Weekday Fund Productions. It's executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Klok and Marie Brenner. Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler. The researcher is Nadia Metti. Production management from Scherie Houston, Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact checker