Agent Orange groups defend Vietnam ‘warcrime’ charges
NEW YORK - Some of the largest chemicals groups in the world have defended themselves in court against charges they committed war crimes by supplying the US with Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Lawyers for companies including Dow Chemical and Monsanto were responding to a lawsuit that claims up to four million Vietnamese suffered dioxin poisoning from the chemical. Agent Orange, which it is claimed caused birth defects and cancer after seeping into the food chain, was dumped by US warplanes on Vietnamese forests between 1962 and 1971 to destroy sources of food and water used by the Vietcong.
More than 30 companies are named in the suit, which is seeking class action status. Lawyers for the companies are asking a district judge in Brooklyn, New York, to dismiss the claim. The case is regarded as a pivotal test of the reach of the US legal system as it considers the power of the president to authorise the use of hazardous materials during war. The state department lawyers have warned the case threatens the right of the president to go to war at all. It said that if the plaintiffs’ case was successful, it could “open the courthouse doors of the American legal system for former enemy nationals and soldiers claiming to have been harmed by the US armed forces during war.”
John Moore, one of the lawyers for the Vietnamese, said the chemical companies should be held accountable. “We are only suing the chemical companies. We can’t sue the government as they are immune, unfortunately. They should be called to task as well.” He said the companies knew that Agent Orange was highly poisonous but continued to make it for profit. The companies argue they only produced the chemical following US government specifications and that there has never been a proven connection between the defoliant and the health problems. If the lawsuit is successful, billion of dollars could be awarded towards an environmental clean-up and in compensation to the victims.
Judge Jack Weinstein is expected to issue a written decision in the next few weeks. Andrew Frey, a lawyer for Dow, said: “We think it is up to the US government to decide whether what it did was wrongful and whether it should pay restitution. The court should not be second guessing the president’s decisions, which were made after studying the human health consequences and as a military judgment and very likely saved a lot more lives than it injured.” He added that international laws in the 1960s did not recognise corporate liability. However, the plaintiffs have cited precedents from the years after the Second World War when makers of the gas used in Nazi death camps were convicted of war crimes. Judge Weinstein said: “The fact that all power was centralised under Hitler did not permit all people operating under his orders to violate international law.”
However, he was skeptical about the plaintiffs’ claims that the use of Agent Orange did indeed violate international law, saying it was far from clear whether agreements barring weapons such as poison gas applied to the case. In 1984, seven US chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, paid $180m to keep a US veterans’ class action out of court.
By David Litterick - The Telegraph - March 2, 2005
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