The suit charges that 30 companies that produced the herbicides used in the Vietnam War violated international law and committed war crimes. It seeks damages for injury to and wrongful death of Vietnamese as well as environmental compensation for Vietnam.

Washington sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange on Vietnam from 1962 to 1971, arguing it was to destroy vegetation that could feed or hide liberation fighters. The lawsuit charges up to 4 million Vietnamese suffered dioxin poisoning as a result. Dioxin can cause cancer, deformities, mental retardation, and organ dysfunction.

Included in the Vietnamese delegation in the courtroom February 28 was plaintiff Dr. Phan Thi Phi Phi, who had four miscarriages within two years in the early 1970s. She had been working in an area heavily sprayed with Agent Orange.

“We did not know what happened to us, what was the cause of it, so we were very sad because we had so many miscarriages and we could not have children,” she told reporters.

Lawyers for Dow and Monsanto urged Judge Jack Weinstein to throw out the case because they said their clients were simply executing the orders of a U.S. president, John Kennedy. In 1961 Kennedy requested a scientific opinion from advisers on the dangers of Agent Orange and was told it was safe, they said. Speaking to ABC news outside the courtroom, Monsanto representative Glyn Young claimed, “The overwhelming weight of all of the independent scientific evidence on Agent Orange shows that there's no connection between exposure and any serious human illness. Second, the use of Agent Orange was first authorized by President Kennedy, and he did it to save the lives of U.S. and allied servicemen.”

Monsanto was one of seven chemical companies that agreed in the 1980s to pay $180 million in damages to U.S. GIs and their families for Agent Orange poisoning stemming from the war in Vietnam.

The U.S. government has also filed a brief demanding the case be dismissed. Ori Levin presented the government’s argument in court, protesting that it is “extraordinary” for “former enemy soldiers” and others to be able to sue U.S. corporations for what they did in the war. Moreover, he said, it is “inappropriate” for the courts to question a president’s wartime actions. Levin stated that once a U.S. president makes a decision that may run counter to international law, that decision becomes domestic law and stands above international rulings.

“That goes pretty far toward saying the president isn’t bound by law during wartime,” Weinstein replied. “Is a direct violation of a major human right not subject to check by the courts? That’s outrageous!”

Weinstein will rule in several weeks on the dismissal motions.
 
 
Related articles:
Plaintiffs’ stories told in legal briefs
Monopolies poisoned U.S., Vietnamese workers  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home