Rosa

Plaintiffs brought suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against the San Francisco Baseball Associates (“the Giants”), the Giants’ Latin America scout, Luis Rosa, and the Giants’ Minor League Coordinator, Jack Hiatt, for violations of federal and state law including sexual harassment, sexual battery, wrongful termination, fraud and conversion. The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ action on the ground of forum non conveniens, concluding that the Dominican Republic was the better forum for the suit. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we reverse.

I

The thirteen plaintiffs are aspiring professional baseball players who live in the Dominican Republic. When they were be *511 tween sixteen and twenty years old, they were recruited by Luis Rosa, the Giants’ former Latin America scout. At Rosa’s instigation, each player signed a seven-year minor league contract with the Giants. Although the contracts initially provided that all the plaintiffs would play baseball for the San Pedro Giants in the Dominican Republic, the contracts could be assigned, and the players transferred, to minor or major league teams in the United States.…