Vietnamese file first Agent Orange suit

[dArKeR]

HANOI - Three Vietnamese who say they or their families became ill from Agent Orange defoliant used by America in the war nearly 30 years ago have filed the first lawsuit against makers of the product, a victims group said.

The two women and a man filed the suit seeking unspecified damages on January 30 in a New York court, an official at the Vietnam Association of Agent Orange Victims told Reuters on Wednesday. The group was formed last month.

Dow Chemical Co and Monsanto Co, the two largest makers of the chemical named after the colour of its containers, were among the more than 20 firms named in the suit, the official said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4161101/

[Lizz612]

1. :dupe:

[Lizz612]

2. Good for them!

I hope they win, there is an amazing amount of evidence on their side. Dow and Monsanto :grr:

[texastoast]

3. I wish they would too, but . . .

It's unlikely. Depends on the doctrine of forum non conveniens as to whether they will be able to bring their lawsuit in the U.S. at all. Can you believe it?

I worked on a case in Texas where Shell had manufactured a pesticide which was not approved for use in the U.S. because it made farm workers sterile. So, Shell was bummed out. They didn't want to lose their research and development money, so they continued to manufacture the pesticide and ship it to countries where it was not banned (such marvelous corporate conscience). Some of it was shipped to Costa Rica where a bunch of banana plantation workers were exposed to it and became sterile. The farmworkers brought the suit in Houston at a courthouse six blocks from Shell's world headquarters. Shell argued it was not a convenient forum.

The outcome was that the farmworkers had a forum in their native Costa Rica where their recovery for damages would be limited to $2500. Had the suit gone through in the U.S., the recovery could have been in the millions (what is the relationship of a child to his father worth?; how much is being forced into sterility worth?). Shell fought hard to pay no more than $2500.

Since business has bought all the courts, well . . .

[JPace]

4. Great!

There should be no protection for these
companies who put poisons and chemicals
out there and treat us like bugs. Then
they slink away and hide behind corporate
lawyers and politicians (bush) who protect
them.
We are all inundated with hundreds of
chemicals in our bodies and there have
been no studies on how they effect us.
These companies keep promising to do the
studies then do everything they can to
make sure it does not happen.

below are articles on how the bush regime
don't want you to know you are being
poisoned....

http://www.noharm.org/details.cfm?ID=824&type=document
(you need acrobat for this one)

http://www.hilltopdesign.com/mt/archives/watching_bush/000099.html

[NNN0LHI]

5. Bet it ain't the last n/t

[GreyV]

6. sue them!

I have been advocating this since forever. All people hurt by various American military excursions in the last 40 years should hit back. Hit back where it hurts... hit the money sack that is. American public doesn't care if 50, 500, 5000 Americans die in Iraq or that quite possibly 155,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians perished in our assault. But they will care if the families of thousands of dead Iraqis and families of hundreds of dead GIs got together and sued the crap out of the government. Now THAT would get some attention.

[antipov1]

7. It is about time!!!

It's about time that the corporations that make money off of war, "The Merchants of Death", are held accountable for the horrible suffering of the unsafe products that they make. Especially when they don't know the effects of the there weapon until after it has been deployed, like Agent Orange. It is also time that America has been held at least partially liable for a war that was fought over 25 years ago in a far away country for no reason, a war where millions were killed, a war which served no purpose, for either the American or the Vietnamese people.