A French court on Monday threw out a lawsuit by a French-Vietnamese woman against more than a dozen multinationals that produced and sold a toxic herbicide dubbed "Agent Orange", used by US troops during the war in Vietnam.
Filed in 2014, the case has pitched Tran To Nga, a 79-year-old who claims she was a victim of Agent Orange, against 14 chemical firms, including US companies Dow Chemical and Monsanto, now owned by Germany's Bayer.
Tran To Nga told Reuters the case had been thrown out but that she would appeal. Tran, who worked as a journalist and activist in Vietnam in her 20s, has said she was suffering from effects including type 2 diabetes and a rare insulin allergy.
US warplanes dropped about 18 million gallons (68 million litres) of Agent Orange - so-called because it was stored in drums with orange bands - between the early 1960s and early 1970s to defoliate jungles and destroy Viet Cong crops.
Multinationals
The multinationals had argued they could not be held responsible for use the US military made of their product. The court ruled it did not have jurisdiction to judge a case involving the US government's wartime actions, Agence France Presse reported. Reuters could not immediately see the ruling.
One of Tran's lawyers, William Bourdon, said in a statement on Twitter that the court was applying an obsolete definition of the immunity of jurisdiction principle which contradicted modern principles of international and national law.
He said it was "astounding" that the court had backed the companies' contention that they were acting on orders when responding to U.S. government tenders for contracts. There was no immediate reaction from the companies. So far, only military veterans from the United States and other countries involved in the war have won compensation over Agent Orange.
In 2008, a US federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of a civil lawsuit against major US chemical companies brought by Vietnamese plaintiffs. The United States has maintained there is no scientifically proven link between the wartime spraying and the claims of dioxin poisoning of many Vietnamese. - Reuters
