Court Upholds Dismissal Of Agent-Orange Suits

[babylonsister]

Court Upholds Dismissal Of Agent-Orange Suits
Dow Jones
February 22, 2008: 02:31 PM EST

(Adds comments from lawyer for Vietnamese plaintiffs, Dow spokesman beginning ninth paragraph.)

By Chad Bray

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A federal appeals court Friday upheld the dismissal of more than a dozen lawsuits brought against Dow Chemical Co. (DOW), Monsanto Co. (MON) and other chemical makers over the use of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

The lawsuits include separate cases brought on behalf of veterans and their families and millions of Vietnamese allegedly injured by exposure to the chemical defoliant.

In the cases brought by the veterans, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a prior ruling by U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn in 2004 that the chemical companies could assert a government-contractor defense, which protects government contractors from state-tort liability under certain circumstances when they provide defective products to the government.

"The government made an express determination, based on the knowledge available to it at the time, that Agent Orange as then being manufactured posed no unacceptable hazard for the wartime uses for which it was intended, and that the product should continue to be manufactured and supplied to it," U.S. Circuit Judge Robert D. Sack wrote in one of three opinions in the cases.

more...

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200802221431DOWJONESDJONLINE000784_FORTUNE5.htm

[cloudythescribbler]

1. This case just goes to show what an issue-laundering machine the US judiciary really is ...

there are more creeps going around pushing this kind of oppression in the rotund name of the "law" than imaginable or needed...