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Both the plaintiffs and the chemical companies insisted that their side had enough legal ammunition to win the case. They agreed to the compromise in order to avoid a lengthy, expensive, emotional and uncertain jury trial. Although some corporate executives felt that the chemical companies had surrendered to an unjustified payoff, the share prices of the five companies on the New York Stock Exchange rose after the news. Some veterans felt that their side had sold out. "This was the settlement the chemical companies were looking for," said Lee Covino, a Viet Nam veteran in New York City. "The vets had no say in this." But most seemed to agree with Frank McCarthy, president of the Vietnam Veterans Agent Orange Victims. "It's an incredible start," he proclaimed. "We wanted a trust fund, and we got it without going through a trial and opening old wounds."
The U.S. first began spraying Agent Orange over Viet Nam in 1965 to defoliate the jungles and roadsides that the enemy was using for cover. The herbicide got its name from the bright orange stripes on the steel drums that contained it. By itself, Agent Orange is not considered unusually dangerous to humans, but a compound produced in its manufacture, dioxin, is one of the most toxic chemicals known. A tiny amount of dioxin can kill some laboratory animals and in others produce liver disorders, various cancers and birth defects. In 1970 the U.S. military stopped using Agent Orange over Viet Nam. By that time some 11 million gallons of the herbicide had been sprayed over the country. It has been estimated that 50,000 to 60,000 servicemen were exposed to the chemical. Said Veteran Al Marcotte: "We bathed in it, drank it and slept in it."
Despite dioxin's effect on laboratory animals, it has never been conclusively established if dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange is directly responsible for ailments in humans more serious than chloracne, a disfiguring skin problem. But after a 1976 explosion at an Italian chemical plant, which spread dioxin over a village and resulted in chloracne and the widespread death of animals, many veterans became convinced that Agent Orange was responsible for most of their ailments.
Victor J. Yannacone Jr., a Long Island lawyer who fought to ban the insecticide DDT in the '60s, filed a class action against the manufacturers of Agent Orange in 1979. (He later withdrew from the case in a dispute with other attorneys for the veterans.) During the next five years the case provoked waves of other suits, countersuits, motions and medical examinations, as well as conflicting claims about the harmful effects of dioxin on humans.