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Trial Set for Agent Orange

By John Lindquist

"They killed me in Vietnam and I didn't even know it," said Paul Reutersham, not long before he died of cancer in 1979. This became a battle cry for thousands of veterans, their families and supporters as they dug in for battle to get testing, treatment and compensation for Agent Orange. A six-year long battle still rages; the court date for the trial against the chemical companies is set for May 7, 1984. Hopefully, we can straighten out some of the tales circulating recently in the media.

First, we do now have a new judge in the case, Jack Weinstein of the Federal Court in Brooklyn, NY. This judge is different from Judge Pratt, but that has distributed the corporations on the other side more than it has upset the lawyers for the veterans. The working-class make-up or whatever jury comes out of Brooklyn may well work to our advantage. Judge Weinstein is known as a no-nonsense judge. That means the attorneys may have to work twice as hard to prove our case. Weinstein is also anxious that the case not go on forever and wants no mistakes which might be overturned on appeal. He has re-included Hercules Chemical Company (it had been dropped during earlier maneuvering) and expanded the case into three parts:

1. Settle the issue of generic damage; do these chemicals (no matter who made them) cause damage to human beings?
2. Did these chemical companies act negligently, thus making them liable for the damage done to these veterans are part of the class in this part of the trial)?
3. If these companies damaged these veterans, how much should they get, and how can these damages be awarded without lots of individual court battles for money.

The third part will be decided by trying 6-10 actual cases covering a broad range of effects in order to see how much the trust fund should be.

As there is a new judge now hearing the case, we have also lost Victor Yannacone and Associates as the lead counsel for the veterans. As veterans we had no say in the matter. Yannacone has been forced, by circumstances, to be relieved of the responsibility as lead counsel. Over the past years he has rendered us a service which can never be repaid, and is also left with $235,000 in debts.

There has been confusion over who did what to whom in terms of representation. We knew that when we got involved in the case it would be no picnic, but what has happened is that we no longer have any say in the case. The case is alive and well, we are being represented in court, but we have no control over what happens. Of course once we turned over control to attorneys, even those we trusted, we had lost control. We do want to let everyone know that, once the case is over, we will try to find out what happened in the internal in-fighting, the power trips and manipulation that seems to have gone on, and we will let people know what we find out.

For now, however, we're in pretty good shape. The court appointed a "plaintiff's management committee" to represent us. The chairman of that committee is Steven Schlagel of Chicago (whom we know) who is, according to Yannacone, an excellent lawyer with a great deal of confidence and determination to win.

We are involved, once again, in the making of history. The trial should take (according to the judge) from May until September 1984. We fight on because of brothers like Paul Reutersham, Ed Juteau and others who have already died from Agent Orange exposure. We fight for ourselves and for our families and for the countless hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who were also exposed to our herbicides. The chemical companies, the Pentagon and the VA fight us tooth and nail because they can't admit what they have done to us or the people of Southeast Asia. As we can see from their actions in Lebanon and Central America, they haven't learned a damn thing!

THINGS TO DO IF YOU THINK YOU WERE EXPOSED TO HERBICIDES

1. Go to the nearest VA and take the Agent Orange screening.
2. File for service-connected disability for Agent Orange.
3. Join the class action suit against the chemical companies; get others to join. The chairman of the management committee is attorney Steven Schlagel, 1 North LaSalle St, Chicago, IL 60602. The phone is (312) 782-1061. A phone call could direct you to a local attorney who is involved in the suit.
4. Gather up your records including your children's health records. Send for 201 file (Service Record Book), health records, statement from people in your old units, a personal narrative, copies of the H.E.R.B.S. tape.
5. Write to VVAW. We have the nation's best Agent Orange material. Also get active in the local veteran's community.

—John Lindquist
VVAW National Office