Paris Court of Appeals yet to rule on Vietnamese dioxin victim’s lawsuit

Tran To Nga, 82, lodged an appeal against Bayer-Monsanto and 13 other firms that produced or marketed Agent Orange/dioxin used by the US military during the war in Vietnam between 1961-1971. In 2021 the Evry first instance court rejected Nga’s suit, ruling that the firms had enough grounds to use ‘immunity’ because they acted at the request of the US government.

The hearing on May 7 lasted for three and a half hours, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (local time). Supporters of the lawsuit arrived in large numbers from early morning and awaited the results outside the courtroom.

Two lawyers who volunteered to support Nga in the lawsuit, Bertrand Repolt and William Bourdon, rejected the judicial immunity of the US chemical firms, saying the firms were aware of the dangers of dioxin, but had no warnings or preventive measures.

Therefore, these firms could not hide behind the US government to completely deny their responsibility, they stressed.

The lawyers also pointed out that the right to trial is the basic right of a victim like Nga and hoped to be able to bring the case back to the jurisdiction of the Evry court.

For their part, the lawyers of the chemical firms completely denied their clients’ responsibility, asserting that they only complied with the technical requirements of the US military during wartime.

The Paris Court of Appeals is scheduled to release the ruling on August 22, 2024.

Tran To Nga is one of more than three million Vietnamese victims who suffered the consequences of Agent Orange/dioxin. She has spent more than 10 years demanding justice for the victims, including six years of pursuing the lawsuit.

When she filed the lawsuit, there were more than 3 million victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam. After 12 years, the number of the victims has reached more than 4 million belonging to second, third and fourth generations.