Paris court rejects appeal against chemicals giant over Vietnam War use of Agent Orange

A Paris court has rejected an appeal by a French-Vietnamese woman who has been trying to sue Bayer-Monsanto and 13 other agrochemicals groups that supplied Agent Orange to the U.S. army during the Vietnam War.
Some 18 million gallons of the highly toxic herbicide were sprayed in Vietnam during the war. The country blames the chemical for birth defects in 150,000 children.
Tran To Nga, who was born in what was then known as French Indochina, was exposed to the sticky defoliant substance in 1966 when it was used to destroy forests protecting communist fighters.
She has had “repeated tuberculosis, cancer and type II diabetes,” according to advocacy group Collectif Vietnam-Dioxine. Her daughter, born in 1969, died of a heart defect at 17 months, while her two other daughters and grandchildren have “serious pathologies,” the group said.
To Nga lost her first case in 2021, when a French court ruled that the companies benefited from legal immunity because they were working for a sovereign government.
Today, the Paris Court of Appeal used the same argument to reject her appeal, saying the case was “inadmissible” because it “ran up against the immunity from jurisdiction enjoyed by companies” since they acted on the orders of the U.S. state.
She is “disappointed, but she is a person full of wisdom. She knows that it is a long, difficult battle,” her lawyers told Agence France-Presse. She intends to appeal to the Court of Cassation, reported Le Monde.
In the U.S., some veterans have been compensated by some of the agrochemical companies.
But that hasn’t been extended to Vietnamese victims. In 2005 a U.S. court rejected a case brought by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.