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C H A P T ER 16 Two and a Half Million Plaintiffs I don’t want this case to be inconclusive like the war was. I still don’t know whether Agent Orange was responsible. —A Vietnam veteran testifying before Judge Jack Weinstein1 Where do you get off saying you don’t want a witness to answer a question? This man’s lawyer has no objection to him answering a question; it’s certainly not your obligation to do so. Where do you have the right to break up a hearing like this? —David Gross, attorney for Thompson Chemicals, complaining about an objection made by Victor Yannacone, attorney for the Vietnam veterans, during the deposition of a government witness I’m representing two and a half million plaintiffs. —Yannacone’s response2 In the spring of 1978, Paul Reutershan (see Chapter 15) retained Edward Gorman, a Long Island personal injury lawyer, to sue the manufacturers of Agent Orange. Reutershan was killed by his cancer nine months later, before the case made any real headway. The relationship between Gorman and Reutershan’s group, Agent Orange Victims International, quickly deteriorated, and Gorman gave up on the litigation. He recommended one of his friends—Victor Yannacone, another Long Island personal injury lawyer—as a replacement.3 There would probably never have been a veterans’ lawsuit without Yannacone’s brilliance and drive. But his arrogance and lack of people skills got him thrown off the case long before it was over. Yannacone explained to Peter Schuck, author of Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts, why he was the perfect lawyer for this case. First of all, 142 he’d been pre-med in college, so he had a grasp of the necessary biology. Even more important, his specialty was workers’ compensation, which gave him an excellent grounding in public health issues. “Workers’ compensation practice involves minimal fees, but can generate an extraordinarily large volume of cases. Before long, I had handled cases involving asbestos, beryllium, ketone, arsenic, industrial oils, and many other toxicants. That’s how I saw my first chloracne victim.” Yannacone’s practice wasn’t particularly challenging. “The Compensation Board is frequently in recess, and I can handle my 3,000 open cases easily from a table in the state office building cafeteria.” He spent his leisure time doing pro bono work, particularly for environmental causes. Once when suing a public health agency about to spray DDT in Long Island, the judge asked him if there was any legal principle to support his argument. Yannacone explained to Schuck that this was when he’d invented the term “environmental law.” He later helped create the Environmental Defense Fund, which was instrumental in banning DDT.4 Yannacone already knew about the Agent Orange case; Edward Gorman had approached him for help back in June 1978. Yannacone told Gorman that he wouldn’t be interested unless the litigation was reconceived as a class action. A few months later, Gorman asked Yannacone (who happened to be in Washington) to attend a congressional hearing on Agent Orange. “I go into this almost empty hearing room. Somebody from the VA and Al Young were testifying. There’s like one Congressman. Nobody wants to hear anything. Just submit your papers. And they leave. There’s no press. So I wander around scooping up materials and I leave. I’m looking at this report by Young, and I’m saying to myself, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve got a book that thick by Al Young. Not only don’t they match, the data’s been dramatically altered. Now, nothing could possibly be wrong with anybody.’ It was obvious that he had done a first-class job of sanitation.” Yannacone rewrote the complaint, and on January 8, 1979, he filed it as a class action in the Federal District Court in Manhattan. He wasn’t sure how, or even if, the press would react. “I have a policy when I file a reasonable paper. After it’s filed, I take a copy and walk down to the press room and drop it on the desk of the senior reporter, and I leave. If it’s a good lawsuit, before I get to the door, somebody comes right after me.” This time, nothing happened. “So I take the train home, and get there at about 3 in the afternoon. My secretary told me the phone was ringing off the wall. Newspaper reporters and radio stations from all over...

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