The France-based Bourdon & Associates law firm affirmed its support for Vietnamese-French Tran To Nga in her lawsuit against multinational chemical companies after the Crown Court of Evry City ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to hear her case on May 10.
In their announcement issued right after the Evry court’s ruling, lawyers William Bourdon, Amélie Lefebvre và 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.
They said they were surprised as the court recognised that the companies concerned had acted under the constraint of the then US government whereas they answered to a call for tenders, which they were free to do or not.
More seriously, the US 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 US army 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.
During 1961-1971, the US troops sprayed 80 million liters of herbicides and defoliants, 46 liters of which were Agent Orange produced by many companies.
