"Agent Orange on Trial" is a riveting legal drama with all the
suspense of a courtroom thriller. One of the Vietnam War's farthest
reaching legacies was the Agent Orange case. In this unprecedented
personal injury class action, veterans charge that a valuable
herbicide, indiscriminately sprayed on the luxuriant Vietnam jungle
a generation ago, has now caused cancers, birth defects, and other
devastating health problems. Peter Schuck brilliantly recounts the
gigantic confrontation between two million ex-soldiers, the
chemical industry, and the federal government. From the first
stirrings of the lawyers in 1978 to the court plan in 1985 for
distributing a record $200 million settlement, the case, which is
now on appeal, has extended the frontiers of our legal system in
all directions.
In a book that is as much about innovative ways to look at the
law as it is about the social problems arising from modern science,
Schuck restages a sprawling, complex drama. The players include
dedicated but quarrelsome veterans, a crusading litigator, class
action organizers, flamboyant trial lawyers, astute court
negotiators, and two federal judges with strikingly different
judicial styles. High idealism, self-promotion, Byzantine legal
strategies, and judicial creativity combine in a fascinating
portrait of a human struggle for justice through law.
The Agent Orange case is the most perplexing and revealing
example until now of a new legal genre: the mass toxic tort. Such
cases, because of their scale, cost, geographical and temporal
dispersion, and causal uncertainty, present extraordinarily
difficult challenges to our legal system. They demand new
approaches to procedure, evidence, and thedefinition of substantive
legal rights and obligations, as well as new roles for judges,
juries, and regulatory agencies. Schuck argues that our legal
system must be redesigned if it is to deal effectively with the
increasing number of chemical disasters such as the Bhopal
accident, ionizing radiation, asbestos, DES, and seepage of toxic
wastes. He imaginatively reveals the clash between our desire for
simple justice and the technical demands of a complex legal
system.
This is a book for all Americans interested in their
environment, their legal system, their history, and their
future.
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