Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Jack Weinstein, a World War II submariner, presided over the 1984 class action lawsuit brought by veterans seeking compensation for illnesses they said were connected to Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. Seven chemical companies were named in the case.

Weinstein’s own military experience shaped his view of the veterans and their treatment by the government. “The veterans were treated dreadfully at the time [by their government] and I, as a veteran, had a great deal of empathy for them,” he later said in an interview.

But sympathy did not erase the difficult legal questions surrounding the lawsuit. The veterans faced the daunting task of directly proving that Agent Orange sprayed by C-123 aircraft caused the diseases they feared and experienced.

“It was obvious right from the beginning that the case was a political-legal case and not a technological case” that would turn on whether the veteran plaintiffs could directly establish causation between the spraying and “all the diseases that the veterans were afraid of,” Weinstein said.

Rather than simply allowing the lawsuit to roll toward a jury, Weinstein pushed lawyers representing the veterans and chemical companies to negotiate. He believed that even a courtroom victory for the veterans would face rejection on appeal because of the difficult causation issues involving epidemiology.

Weinstein also believed an appellate rejection could create a major obstacle for future veterans seeking disability benefits connected to Agent Orange exposure. At the time, those claims would have gone through what was then known as the Veterans Administration.

The pressure produced a result on May 7, 1984, one day before the case was scheduled to begin at trial. The veterans and chemical companies reached an out of court settlement brokered by Weinstein.

Under the agreement, the companies were required to establish a $180 million compensation fund. They did not admit liability as part of the settlement, leaving veterans with financial compensation but not the acknowledgment many wanted.

At a later hearing organized by Weinstein, veterans sharply criticized the compensation fund as inadequate. They also described being blindsided in Vietnam when Agent Orange spraying began around them.

Veteran Ramon T. Suarez testified about encountering the spraying while serving in Tay Ninh province, north of what was then Saigon. ”I thought the enemy was throwing gas at us” during the action, Suarez said.

His testimony captured the bitter realization that followed. ”When I got home, I learned it was the U.S.,” The New York Times reported him as saying at the hearing.

Although veterans remained disappointed with the settlement, Weinstein’s handling of the case placed their Agent Orange complaints and experiences on the record. It documented that something had gone terribly wrong in Vietnam, even as the companies avoided admitting liability.

Seven years later, Congress passed the Agent Orange Act of 1991. The law established presumptive status tied to military service for diseases linked to exposure to defoliants.

Since then, more than 690,000 Vietnam veterans have received disability benefits based on presumed exposure to defoliants. The development followed the courtroom fight Weinstein had managed while confronting the legal barriers surrounding direct causation.

Weinstein credited his Navy service, particularly his action during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, with giving him confidence to command a courtroom and a law school classroom. “I had learned how to command, which stood me in great, good stead when I was a professor at Columbia and when I worked in the courtroom,” he told U.S. Courts.

He compared his authority as a judge and professor to standing watch as a Navy Reserve lieutenant aboard the submarine Jallao. “I was in full command of that courtroom and I have been since, just as I was when I was at the conning tower in the middle of the night standing watch” on the submarine, he said.

“The ship was mine, the courtroom was mine, the classroom was mine,” Weinstein added. His words reflected the confidence that carried him from wartime submarine duty into one of the most consequential veterans’ exposure cases of the era.

Weinstein served as a federal judge for 53 years, beginning with his commission on April 15, 1967. He retired from active caseloads in February 2020 and died on June 15, 2021.

At the time of his death, Weinstein was the last surviving federal judge appointed to the bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson. His record included a settlement that forced compensation for exposed veterans and helped preserve their claims for the battles that followed.