Dole Food Company Inc filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against Swedish film makers it accuses of knowingly including "patent falsehoods" in a documentary about Nicaraguan banana workers who sued Dole for allegedly exposing them to pesticides on its plantations.
Dole said it repeatedly "implored" director Fredrik Gertten and producer Margarete Jangard to revise the film "Bananas!*" to show that the bananeros' lawsuits against Dole were thrown out in April by a Los Angeles judge who found a "pervasive conspiracy" to defraud U.S. courts by plaintiffs attorneys and Nicaraguan judges.
Gertten "refused to make any meaningful changes to the film, and persisted in publicly screening it and touting its accuracy in the face of court rulings that the story was false ...," said the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
