Opinion ID: 1463027
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Overview of Agent Orange Litigation

Text: The plaintiffs now before us on appeal represent a small fraction of the many Americans who have pursued legal claims arising out of the government's use of Agent Orange to fight the Vietnam War. See generally Agent Orange III Gov. Contractor Def. Op., 304 F.Supp.2d at 410-14(listing more than one hundred Agent-Orange-related decisions); see also, e.g., id. at 407-23(detailing the history of Agent Orange litigation involving Vietnam veterans). Their claims find their roots in the Agent Orange I litigation, the veterans' class action begun in the late 1970s and settled in 1984. In those cases, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation designated the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York as the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) court for all federal Agent Orange-related cases brought by military veterans of various countries. Thereafter, first Judge Pratt and then Judge Weinstein presided over proceedings involving approximately 600 litigants, hundreds of thousands of putative class members, several years of motion practice (including motions for class certification), and one appeal to this Court. On the eve of trial of those cases, the defendants and class representatives reached what was then thought by the parties and the courts to be a final global settlement of Agent Orange-related cases in the amount of $180 million. Agent Orange I Settlement Op., 818 F.2d at 152-55. Because of what we termed formidable hurdles to the plaintiffs' claims, id. at 174, we affirmed the district court's approval of the settlement at whateven at a total of $180 millionwe termed nuisance value, equivalent to at best only a small multiple of, at worst less than, the fees the chemical companies would have had to pay to their lawyers had they continued the litigation. Id. at 171. The Plaintiffs in 287 cases opted out of the class and thereby the settlement. Thereafter, the district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment in those opt-out actions on the alternative dispositive grounds that no opt-out plaintiff could prove that a particular ailment was caused by Agent Orange, that no plaintiff could prove which defendant had manufactured the Agent Orange that allegedly caused his or her injury, and that all the claims were barred by the military contractor defense. Agent Orange I Opt-Out Op., 818 F.2d at 189 (internal citations omitted). From 1987 through 1997, the settlement fund, which, with interest and other augmentations, eventually grew to about $330 million was distributed to, inter alias, some 291,000 class members who filed claims prior to the 1994 cutoff date. Agent Orange III Gov. Contractor Def. Op., 304 F.Supp.2d at 421. Meanwhile, two sets of plaintiffs who had been members of the original plaintiff class and who were therefore entitled to receive settlement payments, but whose injuries had manifested after their opportunity to opt out of the class action had expired, filed class actions on behalf of themselves and other similarly situated veterans. The district court decided that because the plaintiffs were class members, their claims were barred, and we affirmed. In re Agent Orange Prod. Liab. Litig., 996 F.2d 1425, 1439 (2d Cir. 1993) (Agent Orange II), overruled in part on other grounds by Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc. v. Henson, 537 U.S. 28, 34, 123 S.Ct. 366, 154 L.Ed.2d 368 (2002), Shortly after the settlement fund distributions were completed, the third, and instant, series of lawsuits was initiated. These were brought by two of the sixteen plaintiffs now before us, the Isaacsons and Stephensons, who had not been members of the original plaintiff class. These veterans and their families alleged injuries that resulted from exposure to Agent Orange but did not manifest until after the 1994 cutoff date for filing settlement claims in the original actions. In a 2001 opinion, we held that the district court had erred in deciding that the plaintiffs' claims were barred by the Agent Orange I settlement. Stephenson v. Dow Chem. Co., 273 F.3d 249, 261 (2d Cir.2001) (Agent Orange III ). [5] We concluded that a conflict existed between the plaintiffs and the class representatives because the representatives had permitted the settlement fund to terminate without a provision for post-1994 claimants such as these plaintiffs. Id. at 260-61(relying on Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., 527 U.S. 815, 119 S.Ct. 2295, 144 L.Ed.2d 715 (1999) and Amchem Prods., Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 117 S.Ct. 2231, 138 L.Ed.2d 689 (1997)), As a result, the plaintiffs were not adequately represented by the class, and Agent Orange I did not prevent them from pursuing their claims. Id. at 261. [6]