[Corporations] Judge Martinez + Coca-Cola: Conflict-of-Interest

[Mike Ewall]

NEWS RELEASE:
Campaign to Stop Killer Coke
http://www.killercoke.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 11, 2007
For more information, contact Pat Clark or Ray Rogers at (718) 852-2808

Judge Jose Martinez and Coca-Cola:
Conflict-of-Interest Pattern Emerges

The Florida federal judge whose rulings have repeatedly limited legal 
options for plaintiffs seeking to hold Coca-Cola accountable for 
crimes and human rights violations in Colombia is entangled in a web 
of questionable ties to the world's largest beverage company, the 
Campaign to Stop Killer Coke has recently discovered.

U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez, elevated to the bench by 
President Bush in November 2002, is a proud and active alumnus of the 
University of Miami (UM) and its law school. He is "best known for 
his sideline: color commentator on Spanish radio for Los Huracanes," 
referring to the UM football and baseball teams, according to the 
Miami Herald (11/23/02).

Coca-Cola directly subsidizes UM athletic programs under the terms of 
an exclusive beverage contract with the school, in effect since at 
least the 2003 football season. Judge Martinez's role as a radio 
sports analyst, which continued through the just-ended football 
season, was described on UM's Athletic Dept. website, sponsored by Coca-Cola.

Judge Martinez has also "been active in UM matters, serving as
a 
member of the Governing Board of the UM Hurricane Club," according to 
the biographical note supplied for an Oct. 30, 2006 luncheon at which 
he was the keynote speaker. UM identifies the Hurricane Club as "the 
primary fundraising arm of the athletic department," and a major 
share of the money it has collected before and since Martinez became 
a judge came from Coca-Cola.

In 2003, Judge Martinez initially dismissed The Coca-Cola Company 
from lawsuits brought by the International Labor Rights Fund and the 
United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO, that documented collaboration between 
Coke's Colombian bottlers and paramilitary terrorists bent on 
destroying SINALTRAINAL, the major union representing Coca-Cola workers.

His dismissal of The Coca-Cola Company, headquartered in Atlanta, 
from the 2001 lawsuits was based on the notion that Coke didn't have 
sufficient ownership or control of its bottlers to bear any 
responsibility for such crimes as the killing of 28-year-old union 
leader Isidro Gil at his workplace.

Last September 29 — after almost four years of inaction that 
underscored how justice delayed is really justice denied — Martinez 
ruled that Coke's bottlers in Colombia weren't liable either, despite 
the fact that many Colombian Coke workers have been tortured, 
kidnapped and/or illegally detained by paramilitaries who often work 
closely with Coke's plant managers. All of Martinez's rulings are 
being appealed.

Martinez's 2003 decision was made prior to any discovery, meaning 
that the plaintiffs had no chance to show the degree to which 
Coca-Cola controls foreign operations. The decision was also based on 
a single document: a sample bottlers' agreement that Coke admitted 
wasn't the actual agreement with the bottlers cited in the lawsuits.

Martinez also failed to take into account documents admittedly 
created by The Coca-Cola Company that described its control over 
workplace practices and its right to inspect plants to insure that 
local managers abide by human rights conventions and obey domestic laws.

Coca-Cola FEMSA is Coke's largest Latin American bottler and a 
defendant in the lawsuits. FEMSA's website lists The Coca-Cola 
Company as owning either 31.6% or 39.6% of its capital stock (both 
figures are used) and 46.4% of its capital voting stock. Many of 
Coca-Cola's top executives serve on Coca-Cola FEMSA's board of directors.

As Forbes magazine noted in an article entitled "Coke's Sinful World" 
(12/22/03), "The biggest bottlers aren't subsidiaries of Coke, nor 
are they completely independent. Coke effectively controls them by 
maintaining big equity stakes and a heavy presence on their boards, 
and by providing their main source of business. Yet it keeps its 
stakes in the bottlers below 50% thereby avoiding getting hit with 
their piles of debt and any unpleasant liabilities."

The judge's predisposition in favor of corporate interests came up 
during his brief confirmation hearing in 2002, when Sen. Dianne 
Feinstein (D-Calif.) pointed out that he "specialized in product 
liability litigation
 advising and defending large corporations."

Martinez was a name partner in the law firm of Martinez & Gutierrez 
from 1991 to 2002. After his appointment to the bench, the firm was 
renamed Gutierrez & Associates, but it retained a web address 
(http://www.martlaw.com) that seems to reflect Martinez's continuing 
link to the firm and the many large corporations it represents. 
Martinez himself represented the Tobacco Institute in a January 2000 
case before the Supreme Court.

The website of Gutierrez & Associates lists among its associated law 
firms a Bogota, Colombia firm, Gamboa, Chelela, Gamboa & Useche. That 
firm's website, in turn, identifies as a name partner Carlos Alberto 
Useche-Ponce de Leon, a former vice president of Coca-Cola de 
Colombia, S.A., who also serves as an "Advisor" to the Council of 
American Companies.

"Everything we have learned about Judge Martinez's connections to the 
interests of the University of Miami, its Coke-subsidized athletic 
department, Coca-Cola, and his former law firm suggests at least the 
appearance of impropriety, if not actual bias," said Ray Rogers, 
director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. "To preserve the 
integrity of the judicial process, we believe he must be recused from 
the Coca-Cola cases."

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