An attorney for the workers says they are doing this by using a 19th-century Florida law requiring they each put up bond.

The workers, most of whom are from Jamaica, now farm or sell fruit or charcoal back home and say they barely make enough to feed their families. They want the state 4th District Court of Appeal in Palm Beach County to reverse a lower-court decision.

This lawsuit is the last in a series of wage cases first brought in 1989 against five sugar companies. An attorney for the workers said he expects a state appeals court to rule any day on whether it will hear the workers' argument that the bond is unconstitutional.

The former guest workers say they were regularly underpaid by Osceola Farms Company, a subsidiary of the Fanjul family's Flo-Sun Inc, which also owns Domino Sugar.

The case went to trial in 2007, when Osceola's lawyers sought to have it thrown out because the workers failed to post the US$100 per person bond. Osceola denies that it underpaid the workers.