625 dollars per share to 47.50 dollars on the New York Stock Exchange.
On May 8th, veterans of the Vietnam War whose lives or children and wives lives were affected by the use of Agent Orange during the war accepted a settlement in their class action suit. The suit was against seven chemical manufacturers of the herbicide, four of which are: The Monsanto Company, The Diamond Shamrock Corporation, Hercules Incorporated and The Thompson Chemical Company. The herbicide had been used in large amounts by the United States military personnel in Vietnam to kill off densely overgrown area that were used by guerillas to ambush American troops. Documents that were made public through the suit indicated that Agent Orange contained a toxic byproduct known as dioxin. Dioxin had been proven to kill lab animals but no studies had been conducted of humans. It was the dioxin that was blamed for the deteriorating health of the veterans. In some cases the dioxin was thought to have been the cause of nerve damage and major birth defects in the unborn children of the veterans.
On May 9th, some more details emerged on how the settlement would work. It was established by Eugene Locks, an attorney for the veterans, that it could take anywhere; it could take much longer for any of the plaintiffs to receive their money. The lawyers had also speculated that the number of claimants including wives and children could reach nearly forty thousand people.
Just over a week later on the 18th a second class action suit was filed, representing at least eighteen thousand veterans. It was filed by two law firms, one of which was that of Victor John Yannacone Jr., who had filed the original class action suit against the chemical companies in 1979. This suit alleged that the Veterans Agency had "conspired to disseminate false and misleading information" to veterans about risk of exposure to Agent Orange. The Veterans Agency, however, did maintain that there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Agent Orange was linked with certain diseases.