REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, NEW YORK - A cargo ship with 110,000 cartons of overripe bananas will remain docked at a US port while their owner and the shipping company battle in court over who let them go brown. Both sides reached the deal on Friday, when Del Monte Fresh Produce International agreed Friday to allow the boat, the M/V Green Brazil, to leave Gloucester City and slip unimpeded into the deeper waters of the Delaware River en route to the Atlantic Ocean.

Del Monte Fresh Produce earlier this week sued Netherlands-based shipping company Seatrade Group for 1.5 million USD, claiming that in their four-day trip on the Green Brazil from Guatemala to Gloucester City, New Jersey, the tropical fruit became "no longer fit for human consumption."

According to the Inquirer, the story began Dec. 12, when the M/V Green Brazil set sail from Santo Tomas, Guatemala, with 170,989 cartons of melons and bananas for Del Monte Fresh Produce. By the time the ship arrived at the dock in Gloucester City, sometime around Monday, 109,908 cartons of bananas worth $1.5 million were spoiled, according to a lawsuit Del Monte filed Wednesday in federal court in Camden. Gloucester Terminal LLC runs the port facility.

The melons were fine, but the bananas had no appeal, the suit said. The bananas "were no longer fit for human consumption" because they were in a "distressed state," the suit said. Mushy and black bananas have limited appeal, so they would need to be discounted, "dumped, donated, or otherwise destroyed," the suit said.

Del Monte argued in papers filed in US District Court in New Jersey that the bananas were not kept at the proper temperature. Judge Robert Kugler ordered the Green Brazil held in port until the two parties work out the slippery dispute. The attorney for the Green Brazil could not be reached for comment.

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