Re: The Foreign Relations Authorization Act (H.R. 1757 and S. 903) and the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (“FCSC”) claims of the ill Gulf War veterans; and No. 94-C-1392 - Marshall Coleman, et al vs. ABB Lummus Crest, Inc. et al (23rd Jud. Dist.-Brazoria County, TX
Dear Gulf War Toxic Casualty Client:
In my September 3, 1997, status report to you, I informed you of Senator Jesse Helm’s amendment which would allow the tobacco companies to recover against the $1.3 billion in frozen Iraqi funds but would not allow Gulf War veterans who have been ill since the war to make claims against the money. On September 10, 1997, USA Today led its front page with an article about this controversy. A copy is enclosed for you. Many of you wrote to your U.S. Representatives and Senators about the unfairness of Senator Helm’s amendment. As a result, you are about half-way to victory on this issue.
On October 1, 1997, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 412-5 in favor of Gulf War veterans being able to make a claim against the $1.3 billion in Iraqi funds that are frozen in this country. If you would like to obtain a copy of the one hour debate leading up to this vote, you can contact C-Span at 1-800-277-2698 and ask for the October 1, 1997, U.S. House of Representatives debate regarding frozen Iraqi assets, which is Segment 7408070101.
The fight is not yet won however. Ill Gulf War veterans will not be able to make a claim against this money unless the Senate, also, decides that you can. The Senate will go back into session next week. You should write to both of the Senators from your State, as soon as possible, and express your feelings on this matter. A current almanac or your local library can give you the correct spellings of the names of your two U.S. Senators, if you are not sure about them. The address and reference for both of your Senators will be:
Honorable (your Senator’s name) (then the same letter to your other Senator)
United States Senator
Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Re: The Foreign Relations Authorization Act (H.R. 1757 and S. 903), and the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (“FCSC”) claims of the ill Gulf War veterans
Dear Senator(_____):
Note that it is appropriate to be both respectful though clear and vigorous in expressing your opinion in your letter. I suggest that you cover several or all of the following points in your letter to your two Senators:
1.) This issue is of great importance to you and to other Gulf War veterans. How the Senator stands on this issue will decide how you, your family, and other Gulf War veterans vote in the future.
2.) It would be a grotesque injustice and a bad moral precedent to allow tobacco companies to claim against the Iraqi funds but not allow ill Gulf War veterans to claim against the Iraqi funds. On moral grounds, Gulf War veterans should have priority in their claims against the Iraqi funds over tobacco and other commercial claimants. The Gulf War veterans courageously left their homes and were transported to a desert on the other side of the world to put their lives and health on the line and be exposed to chemical warfare agent fallout for the good of our country and the civilized world. The tobacco industry sells a product which addicts its user and leads to sickness and a premature death. The tobacco and commercial companies took a voluntary business risk in extending credit to Iraq. After relations are eventually normalized with Iraq, the tobacco commercial companies will probably be paid anyway since the Iraqis will continue to buy tobacco and other products. In the meantime, the Gulf War veterans who have been ill and disabled since the war still have no cure in sight after the belated admissions that they were exposed to Saddam’s chemical warfare agents. Under these circumstances, the Gulf War veterans should surely be treated as fairly as the tobacco and commercial interests in being allowed to present their claims against the Iraqi funds. To do otherwise would be a grave injustice that our country would be ashamed of.
3.) You expect that the U.S. Senate will stand by Gulf War veterans on this issue just as the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly did by 412-5 on October 1, 1997.
4.) Senator Helm’s assertion that there is no historical precedent for veterans’ recovery against the Iraqi funds is false and misleading:
a.) The government in the American Revolution impounded land from their Royalist Tory enemies and then gave land grants to our Revolutionary War veterans. For example, the American Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene, who liberated Senator Helm’s own State of North Carolina, was compensated with about 2,000 acres impounded from the Royalist Lieutenant Governor, John Graham.
b.) Veterans who were mistreated as POWs recovered against German and Japanese funds frozen during World War II;
c.) Veterans and their families recovered from Iraqi funds when sailors were killed on the U.S.S. STARK because of Iraqi actions just a few years before the Gulf War;
d.) Allowing ill Gulf War veterans to make a claim against the Iraqi funds does not alleviate the U.S. Government from its non-delegable duty to provide veterans with the benefits that they have been promised. It does not substitute for them. The claims against the Iraqi funds are in the nature of a “third-party claim” in a legal analogy to a State worker’s compensation setting;
e.) Even if there was not historical precedent allowing ill Gulf War veterans to make a claim against the Iraqi assets, it would still be a just and reasonable thing to do.
5.) The United Nations has passed and enforced resolutions for Iraq to compensate Kuwaitis for their personal injury and property losses due to the Gulf War, begun by Iraq’s illegal actions. The money for compensation is being paid out of Iraqi oil revenue from a partial lift of the embargo against Iraq. The American Gulf War veterans who have suffered personal injury due to the Gulf War are similarly situated in their claims arising out of Iraq’s illegal actions and should be similarly allowed to make claims against the Iraqi funds impounded in our country.
6.) Iraq has the second largest known oil reserves in the world and can easily afford the Gulf veterans making a claim against its assets that have already been frozen in our country. The Gulf War was a result of Iraq’s flagrant violations of international law and United Nations’ resolutions. To allow Gulf War veterans that have been ill since the war to present claims against the frozen Iraqi assets is just. Even a small amount of compensation to an American veteran who is disabled and afflicted since the Gulf War could make a big difference between a life lived in dignity and one without.
The U.S. House of Representatives debate and vote was organized and initiated by Representative Lloyd Doggett. You should recognize that he and the following Congressional representatives spoke up for you during the debate preceding the vote:
Congressmen and Congresswomen that spoke up for Gulf War veterans on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:
Lloyd Doggett (TX.) Sylvestre Reyes (TX.)
Chet Edwards (TX.) Bill Luther (MN.)
Paul McHale (PA.) Jim Turner (TX.)
Ike Skelton (MO.) Debbie Stabenow (MI.)
John Tierney (MA.) Ciro Rodriguez (TX.)
Lane Evans (IL.) Rosa DeLauro (CN.)
If one of the above-listed U.S. Representatives is from the Congressional District that you are in, it would be appropriate for you to send a thank you letter to him or her for speaking out for Gulf War veterans in this matter, and let them know that you appreciate that they did not forget or neglect the veterans but spoke up for them, and that as a result you intend to vote for and support him or her in the future.
Your success in the U.S. House of Representatives is analogous to the success of the air war against Iraq. It was successful, but there was no real victory until the land war completed the mission. Likewise, until the Senate decides that Gulf War veterans can make a claim against the frozen Iraqi assets, there is no victory on the matter. Victory is not an assured thing. Senator Helms is very powerful in the Senate as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and many Senators would rather not oppose him unless it really is important. Please do your part for yourself and others and write a letter to your two Senators so that we may reach an ultimate victory on this matter.
In case there is a victory on this matter, you should register with the Persian Gulf War Registry (with the VA or DOD) if you have not yet. You should go through their physical exam (the CCEP - Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program) as soon as you can if you have not yet. The CCEP exam may be relied on in the litigation. The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission has also indicated to me that they will probably rely on the CCEP exam to confirm and validate your symptoms if Gulf veterans can make claims against the frozen Iraqi assets.
You should, also, collect your medical records since the Gulf War if you have not already. Please keep them for now. Later in 1998, we may need them sent to us. It would be helpful for us if you would organize them in chronological order, with the most recent record on top going back to the earliest record after the war on the bottom.
If you have suffered a loss of your income due to your illness since the war, we will, also, need a copy of your tax returns from 1989 to the present. If you have a copy of your old tax returns, please continue to keep them. Please keep a copy of your 1997 return and future ones as we may need those, too. On old tax returns that you do not have, we will be able to obtain those from the IRS, with a release from you, in due course.
In relevant news since my September 3, 1997, status report to you, there were the following items:
11/09/97 President Clinton formed a federal oversight board of five members, led by former Senator Warren Rudman, for monitoring Pentagon research into Gulf War illness; and more than $13 million in government research funds will be directed to new research on low-level exposure to chemical agents. (AP)
11/08/97 The Pentagon has decided to fund a $3 million study by Dr. Robert W. Haley and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Southwestern Medical Center, who believe they have found at least three distinct Gulf War syndromes, which they attribute to “generalized injury to the nervous system” from toxic chemicals. (Washington Post)
11/7-9/97 The third annual conference of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an umbrella organization for 36 grass-roots Gulf War veterans groups, was held in Atlanta. The keynote speaker was U.S. Representative Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.). (Atlanta Constitution)
11/05/97 U.N. inspectors have found evidence that Iraq had produced persistent VX nerve gas before the Gulf War. Saddam had acquired 750 tons of chemicals needed to make VX before the war. (Knight-Ridder)
10/31/97 The final report of the Presidential Advisory Committee will say that the Pentagon has dismissed credible evidence that thousands of Marines may have been exposed to poison gas when they crossed Iraqi minefields as they invaded Kuwait. (N.Y. Times)
10/29/97 The House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight has finished a 20-month look at the Pentagon’s work on Gulf War illness and concluded that Congress should assign or establish a separate group to research the ailment. The House Committee, also, concluded that Gulf War illness was probably caused by a “variety of toxic agents” encountered in the war against Iraq. The agents included nerve agents, vaccines, pesticides and insect repellants, smoke from oil well fires, and depleted uranium from spent U.S. anti-tank shells. (UPI, AP)
10/06/97 The Presidential Advisory Committee still suggests that someone other than the Pentagon should be looking at whether U.S. troops were exposed to chemical and biological agents. (Army Times)
If you are a member of a grass-roots Gulf War veterans’ group that has not yet coordinated with the National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc. (“NGWRC”), they are the leading national umbrella organization of Gulf War veterans’ groups. Their Internet address is www.gulfweb.org/Resource_Center and their Washington, D.C. number is (202) 628-2700, Ext. 162.
In regard to the litigation against the suppliers of chemical and biological warfare materials to Saddam, the Court has signed a new Scheduling Order which establishes the following dates:
March 14, 1998 Jurisdictional discovery regarding present Defendants will be completed by this date. (Until this date, the only discovery authorized is jurisdictional discovery. There shall not be any discovery concerning class certification or that deals with the merits of the case. Any pending discovery dealing with class certification or merits is stayed until further order of this Court.)
April 13, 1998 All special appearances and motions to transfer venue not previously heard will be heard.
May 4, 1998 Court will enter written orders on all pending special appearances and motions to transfer venue by this date.
April 8, 1999 Counsel for all parties shall appear at docket call at 9:00 a.m., at which time the case will be set for trial.
After a decision is made on the jurisdictional matters in May, discovery on the merits will probably commence. The issue of whether the case should be certified as a class action may be reached in 1998. Whatever the decision is on that, there may be an interlocutory appeal of the decision. Likewise, there can be interlocutory appeals after the Court’s jurisdictional decisions in May, on those issues.
Soon after discovery on the merits begins, the Court may allow the Defendants to serve a standard set of written questions and requests for production of documents to you through our offices. I will forward those on to you with instructions and an updated status report if and when that occurs.
Feel free to circulate this letter among other Gulf War veterans if you would like to.
Best wishes for the new year.
Gary B. Pitts
GBP/mb
In order to expand our resources and legal talent working on your case, two attorneys and their law firms have agreed to work with myself and my law firm in prosecuting your interests in the captioned litigation and your possible claim before the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. The two new attorneys are:
Kenneth F. McCallion, Esq. Curtis V. Trinko, Esq.
Goodkind, Labaton, Rudoff & Sucharow, L.L.P. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko
100 Park Avenue 310 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10017 New York, New York 10017
(212)490-9550 (212) 907-0700
They will be lead trial counsel in your claim, and I will be their co-counsel. Both Ken and Curt are experienced litigators with a lot of experience in class actions. Ken worked on the Exxon Valdez litigation in Alaska that resulted in a $5.4 billion jury verdict. It will not cost you any additional attorney’s fees by their being involved. We will split the percentage of contingent attorney’s fees that you have already agreed to. Please cooperate with Ken and Curt as fully as you have been with me so that we may all reach a successful result in your case.
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