US lawyers said they will do their utmost to help Vietnamese Agent Orange victims win at a court of appeal, after their lawsuit against US chemical companies was dismissed by a US court.
“The verdict of the court in the first instance is incorrect. US troops used a toxic defoliant, not a normal one,” local media on Sunday quoted Jonathan Moore, head of a visiting US lawyer group as saying.

Jonathan Moore led a US lawyer’s delegation to Vietnam from Sept. 13-18 to collect more evidence for the lawsuit against the US chemical producers that manufactured and supplied Agent Orange for US troops to spray in Vietnam during the war.

Justice, victory

“Like our Vietnamese colleagues, local Agent Orange victims and those that have a conscience and love justice in the world, we believe the victory of the lawsuit,” he said

Winning the case was important not only to Vietnamese victims, but others in the world and those who were concerned about equality, justice and violation of international laws on human rights, Moore added.

“In the worse case, we will continue to appeal to the US Supreme Tribunal,” he noted.

He said his visit was aimed at helping the Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims Association (VAVA) prepare and finalize the most important document which would be delivered to the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals Sept. 30.

The case was dismissed at the US Federal Court in Brooklyn in early March this year, citing lack of a legal basis to be heard in court.

According to studies of US scientists, US army forces sprayed some 80 million liters of defoliants, mostly Agent Orange, on Vietnam between 1961 and 1971.

The toxic payload amounts to nearly 400kg of dioxin, one of the world’s most stable and toxic substances, which remains in the human population and ecosystem to this day.

Among 4.8 million local people exposed to the dioxin, 3 million are Agent Orange victims, many of them, even their children and grandchildren, suffer from cancer and genetic abnormalities