Bananas!, The Movie

Two months after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge found that toxic-tort suits brought by Nicaraguan banana workers were fraudulent, about 300 people packed a UCLA campus theater for the world premiere of Bananas!, a documentary about the cases. Director Fredrik Gertten, a wavy-haired Swede, personally introduced his film on June 20 as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival. But the director's mood was more appropriate to the screening of an Ingmar Bergman film. "There is a scare we will get sued," he admitted ruefully.

Bananas! had been filmed over a period of two years, with camera crews shadowing lead plaintiffs attorney Juan J. Dominguez as he exhorted clients in Nicaragua, discussed legal strategy in his Los Angeles office, and showed off his Ferrari. "We will win [against U.S. corporate defendants] with their own judges ... with their own law," he proclaims at one rally in Chinandega.

Gertten chose not to re-edit Bananas! to reflect Judge Victoria G. Chaney's ruling and?despite Dole's vigorous objections?the film festival organizers decided to show it anyway. "[S]erious questions have been raised about its credibility," the festival organizers warned in a statement read to the audience. The statement continued, "we are showing this film ... as a case study to illuminate a timely exploration of what makes (and doesn't make) a responsible documentary."

Dominguez did not attend the screening, but Dole's defense team?including General Counsel C. Michael Carter and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Scott A. Edelman and Theodore J. Boutrous Jr.?were in the audience. Two weeks later Boutrous filed a defamation suit on Dole's behalf against Gertten and his production company, WG Film AB. The complaint alleged that Bananas! "promotes as fact a false story that was adjudicated a fraud on Dole and on California's courts before the film was ever screened." (Dole Food Co., Inc. v. Gertten, No. BC417435 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed July 8, 2009).) Taking exception to a scene that depicts the funeral of a banana worker, the com-plaint asserts, "There is no evidence that Dole's use of DBCP has ever caused a single death anywhere."

Gertten's lawyer, Richard J. Lee of Oakland's Lee & Lawless, contends the suit is an attack on the filmmaker's First Amendment rights. "My clients and I believe that this suit is without merit and represents the latest in a continued line of intimidating harassment by a multinational corporation aimed squarely at a small independent film and its filmmakers," Lee said in a written statement. Chaney's ruling, he added, "did not in fact exonerate Dole or its actions in Nicaragua."

In late July the film producers added a team of attorneys from Lathrop & Gage, including Lincoln Bandlow, a First Amendment specialist, and trial attorney John Shaeffer, who heads the Los Angeles office.

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