The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign deeply regrets the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to review the dismissal of the lawsuit of Vietnam’s more than three million aggrieved Agent Orange victims against 37 chemical companies that manufactured this deadly chemical weapon!

We are also saddened by the decision not to review the dismissal of two actions brought by U.S. Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, who did not receive compensation from the chemical companies in the original, 1984, class action settlement, because they did not become sick until later.

“It is unfortunate that U.S. courts have chosen, contrary to U.S. and international law, to deny justice to millions of Vietnamese who suffer from the spraying of dioxin-laden Agent Orange which has left several generations of victims severely sick and disabled,” said attorney for the Vietnamese plaintiffs, Jonathan C. Moore. Agent Orange also destroyed the ecosystems in many locations in Vietnam, and a number of toxic “hot spots” remain contaminated with dioxin in the soil and water. Similarly, large numbers of U.S. veterans and their children and grandchildren, who suffer the awful affects of dioxin from Agent Orange, are left with no redress from the chemical companies who knowingly manufactured Agent Orange with unnecessarily high levels of dioxin in order to rush their deadly product to market and increase profits. But while this particular legal action may have ended it has succeeded in awakening an unstoppable worldwide effort to assure justice and compensation for Vietnam’s Agent Orange victims! Together with the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA), the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign will not rest until the chemical companies that profited so handsomely from their lethal product do the right thing and compensate the victims in Vietnam. We will work together with U.S. veterans and their families until all victims receive justice!

In the following months, we will be stepping up our corporate campaign aimed at bringing public support for the victims to bear on the two largest and most culpable of the corporations – Dow & Monsanto. We will bring these two giant corporations before the court of public opinion until they meet their responsibilities to compensate their victims!

The post Supreme Court’s Denial of Vietnamese Agent Orange Lawsuit Denies Justice appeared first on VAORRC.

U.S. Campaign Continues Fight for Justice

The decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals affirming the District Court’s dismissal of the lawsuit of the Vietnam’s Agent Orange victims and their representative, the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) is an affront to the principles of justice and human rights as is the companion decision denying compensation to U.S. veterans who continue to suffer from their exposure to Agent Orange.

The post Dismissal of Suit Against Agent Orange Manufacturers Violates Human Rights appeared first on VAORRC.

English translation below

Ngày 23/2, trả lời câu hỏi của phóng viên đề nghị cho biết phản ứng của Việt Nam về việc ngày 22/2/2008, Toà phúc thẩm liên bang Hoa Kỳ tại New York đã ra phán quyết bác đơn kiện của các công dân Việt Nam, nạn nhân chất độc da cam/điôxin chống các công ty hoá chất Hoa Kỳ về việc sử dụng chất độc da cam/điôxin trong chiến tranh Việt Nam, Người phát ngôn Bộ Ngoại giao, ông Lê Dũng, nêu rõ:

Phán quyết sai lầm và bất công của Toà phúc thẩm liên bang Hoa Kỳ ngày 22/2/2008 đã làm cho nhân dân Việt Nam rất bất bình. Phán quyết này đã phủ nhận một sự thật là chất độc da cam/điôxin mà quân đội Hoa Kỳ sử dụng trong chiến tranh ở Việt Nam đã gây ra hậu quả hết sức nặng nề cho con người và môi trường Việt Nam, cho dù điều này đã được nhiều công trình nghiên cứu của các nhà khoa học thế giới, trong đó có các nhà khoa học Hoa Kỳ, khẳng định. Điều hết sức đáng tiếc là Toà phúc thẩm liên bang Hoa Kỳ lại đưa ra phán quyết như vậy trong khi Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ đang có những nỗ lực hợp tác với Việt Nam để khắc phục hậu quả của chất độc da cam/điôxin.

Giải quyết những hậu quả của chất độc da cam/điôxin là vấn đề nhân đạo hết sức bức xúc. Chiến tranh đã kết thúc gần 40 năm, nhưng hậu quả của chất độc da cam/điôxin vẫn còn tiếp tục ảnh hưởng sâu sắc đến đời sống kinh tế-xã hội Việt Nam. Hàng triệu người Việt Nam, nạn nhân chất độc da cam/điôxin vẫn phải hàng ngày chịu đựng nỗi đau cả về thể xác và tinh thần. Các công ty Hoa Kỳ sản xuất chất độc da cam/điôxin phải ý thức rõ điều này và cần góp phần thiết thực vào việc giải quyết hậu quả của chất độc da cam/điôxin, thực hiện ngay trách nhiệm pháp lý, tinh thần và đạo lý của mình, không chỉ đối với các cựu chiến binh Mỹ, mà cả với các nạn nhân ở Việt Nam.

Đòi hỏi của các nạn nhân chất độc da cam/điôxin Việt Nam là hoàn toàn chính đáng. Chúng tôi tin tưởng rằng cộng đồng quốc tế, trong đó có nhiều tổ chức, cá nhân Hoa Kỳ, sẽ tiếp tục sát cánh với các nạn nhân chất độc da cam/điôxin Việt Nam trong cuộc đấu tranh đòi sự thật công lý này.

Ông Trần Xuân Thu – Phó Chủ tịch kiêm Tổng Thư ký Hội nạn nhân chất độc da cam/dioxin Việt Nam khẳng định, đây là một quyết định hết sức phi lý, không công bằng và không phù hợp với thực tế mà những nạn nhân chất độc da cam Việt Nam phải hứng chịu. Chất độc da cam/dioxin không chỉ tác hại đến con người mà cả môi trường sống của Việt Nam.

Ông Trần Xuân Thu kêu gọi nhân dân yêu chuộng hoà bình trên thế giới và đặc biệt là nhân dân Việt Nam cùng lên tiếng phải đối quyết định này và ủng hộ các nạn nhân chất độc da cam/ dioxin trong các vụ kiện tiếp theo của họ.

Hiện nay Việt Nam có khoảng 3 triệu người bị phơi nhiễm chất độc da cam đang hàng ngày chống chọi với nhiều chứng bệnh quái ác như ung thư, sinh quái thai và nhiều bệnh khác. Vì thế đây còn là một quyết định vô nhân đạo.

Hội Vũ
(Nguồn BNG-VOV)

NEW YORK — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected an effort by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange to reinstate claims that U.S. companies committed war crimes by making the toxic chemical defoliant used in the Vietnam War.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said it agreed with U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein, who ruled in March 2005 in Brooklyn that Agent Orange was used to protect U.S. troops against ambush and not as a weapon of war against human populations.

“It is significant that plaintiffs nowhere allege that the government intended to harm human beings through its use of Agent Orange,” the three-judge panel said.

Jonathan C. Moore, a lawyer for the Vietnamese plaintiffs, said he was deeply disappointed.

“It’s both an unjust and an immoral outcome,” he said, and promised to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A lawyer for the companies did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

Monsanto, Dow Chemical and more than a dozen other companies, including Hercules Inc., Occidental Chemical Corp, Thompson Hayward Chemical Co., Harcros Chemicals Inc. and Uniroyal Chemical Co. Inc., were named in the case.

In November 1961, President Kennedy approved the launch of Operation Trail Dust, a campaign of military herbicide operations in Vietnam designed to prevent the enemy from using vegetation for cover and sustenance.

Lawyers for Vietnamese people sued U.S. companies, saying the program caused miscarriages, birth defects, breast cancer, ovarian tumors, lung cancer, Hodgkin’s disease and prostate tumors.

They said the military’s use of Agent Orange violated international, domestic and Vietnamese law and that companies aided the violations or committed their own by helping the military. They sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and an environmental cleanup program.

Lawyers for the companies and the U.S. government had argued that there was no evil intent when Agent Orange was used to clear the Vietnamese landscape for troops.

Agent Orange has been linked to cancer, diabetes and birth defects among Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and American veterans.

In 2002, the United States and Vietnam signed a memorandum of understanding providing for scientists from both governments to work together to determine the effects of Agent Orange on people and ecosystems, along with methods and costs of treatment and environmental remediation.

The United States, though, has never agreed it has a legal duty to provide funds or assistance to remediate harms allegedly caused by Agent Orange.

In a separate opinion, the appellate court also said companies are protected from lawsuits brought by U.S. military veterans or their relatives because the law protects government contractors in certain circumstances who provide defective products.

The post The US Court of Appeals delivered a mistaken and unjust decision appeared first on VAORRC.

The post Appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit appeared first on VAORRC.

Hanoi, Vietnam

On February 22nd, 2008, in New York, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the March 19, 2005 judgment of the U.S District Court dismissing the lawsuit of Vietnam’s Agent Orange victims against the companies who manufactured this deadly chemical. This is an irrational, biased and unfair decision which does not respond to the reality faced every day by the Vietnamese victims whose suffering is caused by Agent Orange/Dioxin.

Vietnamese Agent Orange victims would like to emphasize that the U.S. chemical companies’ production and supply of toxic chemicals for U.S forces’ use in the Vietnam War continues to cause deadly and long lasting consequences to human health and ecosystems in Vietnam. The U.S chemical companies knew very well that their products were harmful to human health before they sold these poisons to the U.S government for use in Vietnam. However, in order to achieve maximum profits and speed up production, they used a technological process in the manufacturing of Agent Orange which resulted in much higher levels of dioxin in their Agent Orange, making their product that much more lethal. These companies have ignored the truth and evaded liability for their crimes committed not only against Vietnamese victims, but also victims in other countries that were involved in the Vietnam War.

A serious review of the lawsuit brought by the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin who are daily dying or living in agony due to torturous ailments has been denied, even though the U.S government is paying billions of dollars yearly to compensate U.S veterans who were exposed to the same toxic chemical.

Is there anything more unfair than this? The spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam, Mr. Le Dung clearly stated that, “this erroneous and unfair judgment made by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Feb, 22nd, 2008 has resulted in strong resentment on the part of the Vietnamese people. Regrettably, the Court of Appeals has issued such judgment at a time when the U.S. government is engaging in certain cooperative efforts with Viet Nam in solving the consequences of Agent Orange/Dioxin…”

The demands of the victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin are completely legitimate. The Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin have no other option than to continue their fight for justice, continue to file their appeal in the U.S Supreme Court and continue their campaign to gain stronger support from the public in Vietnam and abroad, including that of the American people and political circles.

We ask people of conscience the world over to stand side by side with us in demanding that the producers of these lethal poisons fulfill their legal, spiritual and moral responsibilities for the consequences that they have caused, and in demanding justice and fairness for the victims of Agent Orange in Viet Nam and in other countries.

The pain suffered by the victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin in Vietnam is the common pain of humanity. Truth is on our side and the struggle for justice will prevail!

The post VAVA Statement on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s opinion appeared first on VAORRC.

• Vietnamese people and their children affected by Agent Orange are suing the companies who profited from manufacturing these chemical weapons.
• The argument against the dismissal of their lawsuit is being heard in Federal Court on June 18th 2007 at 1:00 pm.

Join peace and justice activists across the world in supporting their right to justice and compensation!

The post June 2007 Actions to Support the Lawsuit of Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange; Leaflets appeared first on VAORRC.

By T. Christian Miller, LA Times

Chinandega, Nicaragua — THE people crammed into the stifling basketball gym. They filled the court, lined the walls and tumbled beyond the doors onto the sun-blistered streets.

They had gathered to hear a promise of justice.

Many had spent their lives toiling on banana plantations that U.S. companies operated in this region some 30 years ago. By day, the workers had harvested bunches of fruit to ship to North American tables. At night, some had sprayed pesticide into the warm, humid air to protect the trees from insects and rot.

As the decades passed, the workers came to believe that the pesticide, called DBCP, had cost them their health. Prodded by U.S. lawyers, thousands joined lawsuits in the U.S. and Nicaragua alleging that the pesticide made them sterile.

The U.S. firms that sold and used the pesticide have never faced a U.S. jury trial over its use abroad. Last month, a Los Angeles attorney named Juan J. Dominguez stood before a sea of nearly 800 dark, hard faces and predicted that the day of reckoning was at hand.

“We are fighting multinational corporations. They are giants. And they are going to fall!” Dominguez thundered.

The crowd exploded. They leapt to their feet, waved their hats, shook fists in the air. “Viva! Viva!” they chanted.

The scene last month foreshadowed a legal drama set to play out in a Los Angeles courtroom this summer, when a lawsuit filed by Dominguez and his partners could end a struggle that has sprawled across three decades and courtrooms on four continents.

For the first time, a U.S. jury will have the chance to weigh the accusation that Dole Food Co. knowingly used a pesticide manufactured by Dow Chemical Co. that sterilized workers in Latin America three decades ago.

The complexity, history and geographic spread of the case demonstrate how legal systems have failed to keep pace with the rapid movement of goods across international borders. Jurisdictional and procedural issues have repeatedly impeded attempts to sue U.S. companies in the United States for alleged wrongdoing in other countries.

“The question is where do we litigate these issues,” said Alejandro Garro, a Columbia University law professor and expert in international law. “The answer is that we don’t have a global law. We are building it on a case-by-case basis.”

Dole, the Westlake Village-based food giant, and Dow, of Midland, Mich., deny the allegations. Both companies acknowledge that the pesticide DBCP has been linked to sterility in men exposed to it while manufacturing it in factories. And both companies acknowledge that the product was used in Nicaragua’s banana fields.

But the companies contend that there is no proof that DBCP (dibromochloropropane) sterilized any field worker. The quantities of DBCP used were too small, and the open-air conditions too diffuse, to cause harm, the companies say.

“Dow views most of today’s claims relative to the product as without merit,” said Dow spokesman William Ghant. Dow acknowledged that the possibility of harm existed but said the product was safe as long as instructions were followed.

Dole said it applied DBCP in Nicaragua 13 times in the 1970s, with each spraying lasting about two weeks. The pesticide was an effective killer of tiny worms that caused the roots of banana plants to rot.

“There is no reliable scientific evidence at all that points to this pesticide causing any injury to field workers in the open air environment,” said Michael Carter, Dole’s general counsel. “There is no science to support that. None.”

Earlier this month, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney made a ruling that broadened the potential reach of the case.

Chaney linked Dominguez’s case with four other pending lawsuits in Los Angeles involving sterility claims on behalf of more than 3,000 former banana workers from Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Panama. In addition to Dow and Dole, Del Monte Fresh Produce Inc., Chiquita Brands Inc. and Shell Oil Co. are named as defendants in those cases.

Cincinnati-based Chiquita declined comment on the lawsuit but said it used the chemical briefly in the 1970s in Panama and Costa Rica. Shell said it sold no DBCP in Central America after 1974 and that “few, if any” banana workers were harmed by its product. Del Monte said it used the pesticide briefly in Costa Rica and Guatemala and declined further comment.

In the middle of the dispute are this region’s people. The case has spread its own kind of toxin, infecting every facet of life in this fertile bottomland wedged between volcanoes and the ocean on Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast.

After 30 years of being told they have been poisoned, locals tend to blame the region’s many health and environmental woes on DBCP.

They call themselves the afectados — the affected ones.
13 men, 1 lawsuit

Jose Adolfo Tellez never wanted to be a legal pioneer.

With dark hair and a broad, round face, Tellez lives in a two-room cinder-block house in Chichigalpa, a town in the heart of Nicaragua’s banana zone.

Early each morning he rides his battered black mountain bike seven blocks along rutted streets to the central market, a chaotic warren of shops where beef hangs in strips and baskets of papaya are lighted by shafts of sunlight.

Tellez haggles over prices before the day’s damp heat descends. Heading home, he spends a cordoba — about 5 cents — for a brick-sized block of ice to chill his meat and vegetables.

His main job is tending to his mother, 80, who shuffles across the home’s concrete floors with a donated walker. There is no one else to do the job. Tellez, 58, has no children, no wife, to help him.

He blames DBCP.

Tellez is the lead plaintiff in Tellez vs. Dole, scheduled for trial July 2. He joins a dozen other named plaintiffs, all of whom have had tests administered by their lawyers showing that their semen does not contain sperm.

Tellez believes that he became sterile after going to work outside the small town of Posoltega, 15 miles southeast of here, where Dole began operations in Nicaragua in the late 1960s.

On the plantation, where long, green alleys of banana trees stretched across more than 1,400 acres, he harvested bananas, cut weeds from the plants, trimmed leaves and hauled irrigation tubes.

Tellez said he was never given protective gear while working in the fields. Nor, he said, did anyone tell him that DBCP could cause sterility.

“They told us to go to work, and we would go to work,” Tellez said.

Tellez married, but he and his wife were unable to have children. She eventually left him to live with another man, Tellez said, and soon had a child.

Tellez had thought his wife had the problem. But tests showed he was sterile.

In the macho culture of rural Nicaragua, children are a measure of wealth and power. Tellez had neither. He was labeled a buey — slang for a castrated bull.

“It demoralized me,” he said. “I felt like a useless man.”
Sterility and pesticide

Epidemiological studies have confirmed that DBCP causes sterility in human males, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Evidence of other human health effects is less clear. However, lab animals exposed to DBCP have developed stomach and lung cancers and kidney and brain damage, according to the agency.

DBCP’s toxicity first made news in 1977, when about three dozen factory workers at an Occidental Petroleum Corp. subsidiary in Lathrop, Calif., where pesticides were mixed, reported problems having children. Tests showed the factory workers had zero or below-normal sperm counts.

Within months, the EPA had suspended most uses of DBCP. Government hearings revealed that Dow and Shell Chemical Co., then a subsidiary of Shell Oil Co., the primary makers of DBCP, had long known about its dangers. Tests dating to the 1950s showed the chemical atrophied lab animals’ testes.

Workers began filing lawsuits. In 1983, Duane Miller, a young Sacramento attorney, won a $4.9-million judgment against Dow on behalf of six Occidental workers. Two years later, the EPA permanently banned the use of DBCP in the United States.

It was the first skirmish in a legal war that soon spanned the globe.

U.S. law firms began suing in U.S. courts on behalf of workers in other countries — more than 50,000 plantation workers over 30 years in countries including the Philippines, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Ivory Coast. The defendants have been the manufacturers of DBCP — Dow and Shell — and the fruit companies that used it: Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita.

Nearly every case ran into the legal doctrine forum non conveniens, which says lawsuits should be heard in the countries where the damage occurred. Lawyers for the companies convinced judges to transfer the cases to the countries of origin.

In practice, that stalled the lawsuits for years. Complex trials bogged down in ill-equipped Third World courts. Plaintiffs’ law firms lacked money to pursue cases in foreign countries.

The companies settled some cases without admitting culpability. In 1992, several firms reached a settlement in which $20 million was paid to 1,000 Costa Ricans. In 1997, Dow and other companies paid $41.5 million to 26,000 workers worldwide.

The money was divided among thousands of plaintiffs. After attorneys’ fees, some workers received no more than a few hundred dollars.

By the late 1990s, banana workers and attorneys were frustrated by their inability to get a case before a U.S. jury, with the potential for higher awards and, more important for some, a finding of wrongdoing by the companies.
New rules in court

Then Nicaragua changed the rules. In 2000, its legislators passed a special law to facilitate DBCP lawsuits.

The law stacked the deck in favor of the workers: DBCP was automatically considered the cause of sterility in any banana worker. Companies had to deposit $100,000 with Nicaraguan courts simply for the opportunity to defend themselves.

In December 2002, a Nicaraguan judge awarded nearly $490 million to about 450 workers. Other big judgments followed. Dow and Dole have so far blocked attempts to enforce the Nicaraguan judgments in U.S. courts.

The new law made Nicaragua hostile territory for Dow, Dole and other defendants. That created an opportunity for new lawsuits in the United States, which Dole and Dow no longer opposed.

Dominguez, perhaps best known for his ubiquitous personal-injury ads on Los Angeles buses, seized the opportunity. He partnered with Sacramento attorney Miller, who had filed the first DBCP lawsuits in the U.S. nearly 30 years earlier, and they filed suit in Los Angeles in 2004.

To build the case, Dominguez opened an office here, in the center of Nicaragua’s banana belt. He connected with local union bosses, ran advertisements on the radio, even sponsored a local baseball team.

Thousands came forward to provide sperm samples in a back room set up in Dominguez’s office, a yellow and brown one-story building near the main square here. The samples were analyzed by a laboratory paid for by the attorneys.

Dominguez and Miller filed legal briefs citing old corporate documents which, they said, showed that Dole officials were aware of the dangers. In a 1978 memo, a top Dole official warned that implementing all the procedures in a guide for safe use of DBCP was “well nigh impossible.”

“Did they warn you about this? No,” Dominguez told another crowd at a recent rally. “Did they put you in danger? Yes.”

Although only 13 plaintiffs have been named in the U.S. suit, a victory could result in settlements for the thousands of other former banana workers who can show sterility problems. An original defendant in the Tellez case, Amvac Chemical Corp. of Newport Beach, settled for $300,000 last month.

Dominguez has registered about 12,000 clients in Nicaragua alone. Worldwide, the number of possible clients is estimated to be hundreds of thousands.

Dole and Dow have long experience with such lawsuits. In some instances, the companies have been able to show that supposedly infertile men fathered children. The companies have also discovered plaintiffs who did not work on farms that used DBCP.

Dole has settled some cases directly with workers. It recently announced a program in Honduras to pay up to $5,800 to banana workers who agreed to drop their claims against the company. The company is seeking a similar accord in Nicaragua. Such settlements, Dole said, were not admissions of wrongdoing.

“We don’t want to spend our lives forever dealing with this, so the company has adopted an approach to find a reasonable resolution to these pending claims,” said Carter, Dole’s general counsel.
History of contamination

It is not easy to show that DBCP caused a worker’s sterility or health problems, especially in a poor country like Nicaragua.

The region around Chinandega has long been dominated by agriculture, producing cotton, sugar cane and other crops. For decades, growers — from both the United States and Nicaragua — sprayed DDT, DBCP and other highly toxic pesticides, many linked to developmental or health problems.

Seven studies conducted from 1995 to 2002 found contamination in community wells. Locals routinely drink water tainted with pesticides, said Valeria Delgado, an investigator at Nicaragua’s Center for the Investigation of Water. None of the studies tested specifically for DBCP.

Studies have also found that water supplies are laced with fecal matter and other pollutants. Medical care is scarce. Diet is subsistence level. Many of the men drink heavily.

Medical officials acknowledge that they have no proof, just strong suspicions, that the town’s ills are linked to pesticides.

“If you work in this environment and you wind up sick, I can presume it’s an effect of chemical intoxication,” said Yolanda Garcia, a toxicologist at the local clinic. “I can presume, but I can’t prove.”
Death of a mother

All across Nicaragua’s banana region, in churches and classrooms, at funerals and bars, DBCP is blamed for every illness.

One hot day last August, Leticia Vidabre, 63, lay dying on a mattress on the concrete patio behind her house.

A neighbor waved a folded piece of paper to keep off the flies. Acrid smoke wafted from a nearby cooking fire. Next door, salsa music blared.

Slipping in and out of consciousness, Vidabre struggled to tell her story. She worked in the packing section at one of Dole’s plantations, she said, putting bananas into boxes for shipping to the United States.

She said she believed that washing the bananas and drinking water on the plantations had exposed her to DBCP. After 16 years of working on a plantation called San Pablo, Vidabre began to feel sick. Her back hurt. Headaches were constant. She quit and became a housewife.

“When I started work at San Pablo, I was healthy. When I left, I was in a bad way,” she said.

Last year, a doctor told her that her kidneys were not functioning well. A large woman with heavy lips and eyes, Vidabre began spending her days in bed.

“Those bananas weren’t for us,” she said. “But so many of us have died.”

A month later, on Sept. 6, Vidabre died. She was buried in the town cemetery, just down the road from the old banana plantation.

Her relatives blamed the pesticide. But nobody really knew.

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

The post Central American Plantation workers look for justice in the North appeared first on VAORRC.

A Seoul court yesterday ruled that two American chemical manufacturers must pay reparations to Korean veterans who were harmed by exposure to a toxic defoliant while fighting in the Vietnam War.

Ten veterans, representing 20,615 victims, had filed a lawsuit against two American companies which had supplied the harmful defoliant – known as Agent Orange – containing dangerous amounts of dioxin. The victims said they suffered various cancers, peripheral nerve paralysis, acne and bone marrow diseases. The symptoms were said to have been passed down to the second generation.

The U.S. government had sprayed 72 million liters of the chemical in Vietnam against guerrilla fighters who sought the cover of the dense jungles, official records showed.

Judge Choi Byoung-deok of Seoul District Court yesterday ruled against the two companies, Dow Chemical Company based in Midland, Michigan, and Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri, and ordered them to pay a total of 63.2 billion won ($65.2 billion) in compensation to the 6,795 defendants who suffered physical handicaps from the exposure to dioxin.

Each person should receive compensation of between 6 million and 46 million won, the judge said.

This is the first time a court ruled against the two American companies and ordered them to pay reparations to the victims exposed to the chemical.

The two companies were found guilty of including more than the safe standard of 0.05 ppm of dioxin into the defoliant, creating a chemical toxic to people exposed to it.

The defoliant is a form of pesticide which causes the leaves of a plant to fall off. The United States government claimed it used the defoliant between 1965 and 1973 to get rid of the jungle in Vietnam so that Vietnamese guerrilla forces would be exposed and their food supply would be cut off.

The defoliant was found in 1969 to contain dioxin, which may cause cancer and peripheral nerve paralysis after five to ten years in the body, and can also be passed down to the second generation. The National Academy of Sciences established that there is a direct causal link between dioxin and various cancers, acne, diabetes, and bone marrow diseases.

The NAS, however, said “there is insufficient evidence to establish a direct correlation between dioxin and diseases of the peripheral nerves, most common in victims.” Only 6,795 defendants of 20,615 defendants who filed the appeal will be compensated, excluding the victims who suffered peripheral nerve diseases.

A U.S. court in 1984 had ordered the U.S. manufacturers to pay $180 million as settlement for American veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Since then, many veterans’ victims who did not receive compensation had filed lawsuits against the U.S. manufacturers but lost each time.
About 20,000 Koreans filed two separate lawsuits in 1999 against the U.S. firms, seeking more than 5 trillion won in damages.

In 2002, a lower court had ruled the “causal relationship between the plaintiffs’ illnesses and Agent Orange has not been proven.”

South Koreans made up the largest foreign contingent of U.S. allies fighting in Vietnam, contributing some 320,000 troops. Around 5,077 soldiers were killed and 10,962 wounded.

The Vietnamese government in June 1994 announced that 2 million civilians and soldiers were suffering from the aftermaths of being exposed to the defoliants. The United Nations has since then established the defoliant as a chemical weapon.

The post Court rules U.S. firms pay Agent Orange victims appeared first on VAORRC.

By Kim Tong-hyung, The Korea Times

Photo/Yonhap: Korean war veterans, who fought in the 1965-1973 Vietnam War, react after the Seoul High Court ruled that two U.S. makers of the herbicide Agent Orange should pay compensation to Korean victims, in front of the court building in Socho-dong, southern Seoul.

A Seoul court ruled on Thursday that two U.S. manufacturers of the defoliant Agent Orange, a herbicide widely used during the Vietnam War, should pay compensation to Korean war veterans and their families for medical damages.

It is the first time that a local court ruled in favor of Vietnam veterans who suffered from cancer and other latent diseases believed to have been caused by exposure to Agent Orange, which could open new possibilities for lawsuits against U.S. chemical companies that manufactured them.

The Seoul High Court ordered Dow Chemical and Monsanto to pay 63 billion won ($62 million) to 6,795 people who were among the 20,000 war veterans who filed lawsuits against the U.S. companies in 1999.

Under the court ruling, the two companies will have to pay 6 million won to 46 million won to each of the plaintiffs depending on their medical conditions.

“The Agent Orange products manufactured by the defendants contained dioxin levels higher than standard, proving that the defendants failed to ensure safety regarding the use of its products,’’ the court said in its ruling.

The court associated 11 types of medical conditions _ including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, prostate cancer and diabetes among others _ with Agent Orange, which contains a high-level of dioxin, a toxic group of chemicals that are known to cause birth defects, skin disease and cancer.

However, for illnesses such as Buerger’s disease and peripheral neuropathy, the court said it did not have enough evidence to prove they were linked to exposure to Agent Orange.

The appellate court overturned a decision made by a lower court in 2002, which ruled in favor of the U.S. companies, saying that it was hard to prove that the plaintiffs’ illnesses were caused by exposure to Agent Orange.

Korea sent more than 320,000 troops to Vietnam to fight alongside the United States against the North Vietnamese communist forces during the 1965-73 war, accounting for the largest outside contribution.

According to U.S. government records, the American army used more than 19 million gallons of Agent Orange to spray around Vietnam’s battlegrounds from 1962 to 1971, hoping to destroy forest cover and undergrowth that shielded enemy troops from view.

War veterans from Korea, the U.S. and Vietnam, along with a large number of civilians, have claimed they have been suffering from severe medical effects caused by the exposure to Agent Orange.

According to the Ministry of Patriots and Veteran Affairs, there are more than 131,000 Koreans who claim they have suffered from illnesses associated with Agent Orange.

Although the ruling was hailed as a landmark victory for Korean war veterans, it is still not certain whether they will actually receive payment from the U.S. companies.

As both U.S. companies have no listed property in Korea it means there is little Korean authorities can do should they refuse to abide by the court ruling.

If the U.S. companies refuse to pay the plaintiffs, the Korean war veterans will have to take their legal battle to a U.S. court for possible compensation.

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The lawsuit by the Vietnamese seeks to hold accountable the chemical companies who manufactured and supplied Agent Orange to the government. Contrary to government specifications, the product supplied to the government contained an excessive and avoidable amount of poison in it. That poison was dioxin. It was present in the herbicides supplied to the government only because these chemical companies deliberately and consciously chose to ignore then existing industry standards and produce a herbicide that contained excessive and avoidable amounts of dioxin in it. The presence of the poison dioxin had no military necessity. It was present only because of the greed of the chemical companies. They knew that the more herbicide they produced the more money they would make and the faster they produced it the more they could sell to the government. In order to maximize their profits, these companies ignored industry standards to prevent the byproduct of dioxin from being in the herbicide.

It is this conduct which violated international law and for which the Vietnamese now seek to hold these chemical companies liable for in federal court. It is this conduct that violated universal and specific prohibitions recognized as part of customary international law at the time of the Viet Nam war which prohibited the use of poison as a weapon of war or the use of the dioxin laced Agent Orange because it was intended to and did caused unnecessary and excessive suffering without any military necessity.

Ruling against plaintiffs, March 10, 2005

2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, September 30, 2005

Brief by Agent Orange victims submitted to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on September 30, 2005 against 36 US chemical companies, by Jonathan C. Moore, .William H. Goodman & David Milton.

Class action Complaint, September 10, 2004

Submitted to the U.S. District Court, Eastern District, September 10, 2004 by Constantine P. Kokkoris, representing the victims.

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