May It Please the Court!
From Auto Accidents to Agent Orange:
Building a Storefront Law Practice into
America's Largest Suburban Law Firm
Leonard Rivkin
with Jeffrey Silberfeld
Carolina Academic Press
Durham, North Carolina
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Ch. 9 - Not Your Typical Garden Variety Lawsuit
Early in the afternoon of April 19, 1979, I arrived at the United States Courthouse in
Westbury, Long Island, for the very first pretrial conference in the Agent Orange litigation, a highly
publicized, emotionally charged class action lawsuit by American, Australian, and New Zealand
veterans who had served in the armed conflict in Vietnam. The suit was against the manufacturers
of Agent Orange, a controversial herbicide used by the United States military in Vietnam to defoliate
trees and kill crops. The veterans claimed that many of them were suffering from cancer and other
serious illnesses, that those that were presently healthy had an increased risk of contracting cancer
in the future, that many of their wives had suffered miscarriages, and that many of their children had
sustained grievous birth defects, all as a result of the veterans' exposure in Vietnam to Agent Orange.
They sought billions of dollars in damages.
My client in the Agent Orange case was one of the defendants, Dow Chemical, which had
manufactured more Agent Orange for the United States military than any other company.
There was one item on the court's agenda that afternoon, a minor discovery matter.
Something only a lawyer could get worked up about. Nevertheless, I fully expected a standing room
only crowd and was not disappointed. More than 100 people jammed their way into the courtroom,
including attorneys for both sides, employees of the corporate defendants, reporters, and spectators.
Nothing to be alarmed about, except that two dozen of those spectators were Vietnam
veterans dressed in full combat fatigues. They were unarmed, of course, but the presence of
uniformed soldiers in a federal courthouse was startling and intimidating. All but one of the veterans
sat in the gallery and listened very attentively to everything that was said. The last veteran stood at
attention inside the main door to the courtroom for the entire length of the proceedings holding an
American Flag.
There were dozens if not hundreds of court hearings in the Agent Orange litigation. Veterans
in combat fatigues attended almost every one of the them.
* * *
Jump ahead four years. On a cool spring morning in 1983 I arrived at my office shortly after
the crack of dawn prepared to spend another 12 hour day working on Agent Orange. I rode the
elevator up to my filth floor corner office and walked behind my desk when suddenly I stopped dead
in my tracks. There was a small round hole about waist high in the floor to ceiling window directly
behind my chair. Several cracks radiated outward from the hole like the spokes of a wheel. I was
no expert but quickly concluded that nobody could throw such a small rock through a fifth floor
window. The hole must have been made by a bullet.
* * *
Not counting the cracked window, I received numerous death threats during the course of
the Agent Orange litigation, as did many high ranking executives at Dow's Midland, Michigan,
corporate headquarters. My office and Dow's corporate headquarters also received several bomb
threats. There was a bomb threat at the federal courthouse Brooklyn, after the case was reassigned
there. In addition, break-ins occurred at three government offices where Agent Orange records were
stored.
As the scheduled vial date approached, the number of death threats against me and Dow
employees increased to the point where we felt compelled to hire a security firm to assess the
situation and provide recommendations and advice. They suggested, among other things, that we
install a steel door to the room where we maintained our Agent Orange files; that we change the
locks at our homes and offices; that we provide them with any intelligence we might have regarding
groups in Michigan and on Long Island that were interested in the case; that on weekdays security
guards work two shills, from 4p.m. to 8 aim, at our homes and at the temporary quarters we rented
in Manhattan; that on weekends the security guards at our homes work around the clock; that we
not hold any impromptu news conferences outside the courthouse; that we rent equipment for the
detection of mail bombs; and that they check out the places where we planned to eat lunch during the
course of the trial.
They also suggested that the attorneys who were going to try the case and the Dow
employees who would be attending court on a regular basis be fitted for bullet proof vests.
Then they asked us a rather scary question: in the event of gunfire, who would be the number
one individual to protect. Every lawyer on our Agent Orange defense team voted for himself
* * *
Veterans in combat fatigues. Bullet holes. Bomb threats. Break-ins. Death threats. Bullet
proof vests. The Agent Orange litigation was obviously not your typical, garden variety lawsuit; it
was one of the most extraordinary cases in recent legal history, not just in these respects, but in many,
many, more.
to chapter 10....
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