Summary by Jonathan Moore
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
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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.
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[pdf-embedder url=”https://vn-agentorange.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2ndcirbrief_text.pdf”]
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.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://vn-agentorange.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20040910_amended_brief.pdf”]
