Legal News

Dole finds new documentary to be a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham

By Richard Binder

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney ruled in late April that the attorney who serves as the centerpiece of a new documentary called ?Bananas!? was involved in a ?blatant extortion? of Dole Food Corp. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the documentary paints Juan Dominguez in a bit more of a complimentary light than Dole would prefer.

The film follows Dominguez as he represents Nicaraguan banana plantation workers who say they were made sterile by a pesticide that Dole used on its farms. Judge Chaney ruled that the supposed victims weren?t sterile and had never even worked on Dole?s banana farms.

?We wrote the filmmaker and said, ?You may not have known this when making the documentary, and we understand,?? said Scott Edelman, a partner at downtown L.A. firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP who represented Dole in the case. ?But you really need to rewrite your movie to reflect the facts.?

The ?Bananas!? documentary by Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten is to be shown for the first time June 20 in Westwood. Gertten, who was traveling, initially said he would answer questions via e-mail. But when he saw the questions, he declined to answer them.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on June 08, 2009 (boomark / email).