In their announcement issued right after the Evry court’s ruling, William Bourdon, Amélie Lefebvre, and Bertrand Repolt, who have supported Nga for more than 10 years, affirmed that the court was applying an obsolete definition of the immunity of jurisdiction principle which contradicted modern principles of international and national law.

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An article about the lawsuit

They said they were surprised as the court recognized that the companies concerned had acted under the constraint of the then U.S. government whereas they answered to a call for tenders, which they were free to do or not.

More seriously, the U.S. government at that time did not force the production of products containing a high dioxin concentration such as Agent Orange. This only came from the policy of the chemical companies themselves, the lawyers said.

Nga, 79, accuses 14 multinational chemical companies, including herbicide manufacturer Monsanto (now under the Bayer Group of Germany), of supplying the herbicide and defoliant chemical - Agent Orange (AO)/dioxin, which was used extensively by the U.S. troops between 1961-1971 in Vietnam, causing serious consequences for 4 million people and severely poisoning the environment.

The woman, also an AO victim, has pursued the lawsuit for over a decade, including six years in court.

U.S. warplanes dropped about 18 million gallons (68 million liters) of Agent Orange over jungles in Vietnam between the early 1960s and early 1970s.

Source: VNA