Lathrop & Gage partner Lincoln Bandlow launched his First Amendment law practice in the 1990s as a young lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Fifteen years later, he put his training to good use defending a Swedish filmmaker named Fredrik Gertten, who was sued for defamation by Bandlow’s former mentors at Gibson, Dunn.
That lawsuit a couple of years ago was over a documentary Gertten made exploring the Dole Food Company’s toxic tort fight with Nicaraguan banana farmers ["The Kill Step," October 2009]. But in January, Bandlow was reunited with his client under very different circumstances. He found himself sharing the stage with Gertten at the Sundance Film Festival to answer questions about the filmmaker’s newest documentary. And this time he wasn’t defending the film; he was one of its stars.
