Lawyers Who Flocked to India Disaster Hit

Without naming names, the Board of Governors of the California Trial Lawyers Assn. on Wednesday condemned American colleagues who flocked to Bhopal, India, soliciting as clients victims of the recent Union Carbide Corp. gas leak that killed at least 2,500 people and injured tens of thousands.

“We find particularly abhorrent,” the group stated in a resolution, “both the use of such self-promoting devices as news conferences held at the scene of the disaster . . . in which overstated claims are made in advance of any reasonable opportunity to investigate the underlying causes of the tragedy, as well as the premature filing of lawsuits whose overblown and unrealistic demands are made solely for the purpose of gaining publicity.”

A spokesman for the 5,400-member organization, which is made up primarily of plaintiffs’ lawyers who file personal injury suits resulting from accidents and disasters, said no purpose would be served by pointing fingers at specific attorneys who have involved themselves in Bhopal cases.

The first local litigation over the disaster was a $50-billion class-action suit on behalf of 40,000 victims that was filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court by a Los Angeles attorney. Two Santa Monica attorneys have filed similar litigation in New York. None of the three could be reached for comment on the trial lawyers’ association statement.

Despite its criticism of the post-disaster form of “ambulance chasing” by colleagues, the organization staunchly defended use of the contingency fee under which lawyers handle cases at no cost to the plaintiff, accepting as pay a large percentage of the final damage award.

Lawyers soliciting Bhopal civil cases have been criticized publicly of preying on victims by demanding huge contingency fees.

Couldn’t Afford to Sue

Without contingency fees, the organization spokesman said, most injury victims could never afford to go to court.

“While we condemn those lawyers who rush to the scene of disasters only to promote their selfish interests,” the resolution stated, “we nevertheless take pride in the role that contingency fees for personal injury lawyers have played in the past in forcing improvements in the safety of products, work sites and public and private premises, as well as in the performance of professional services.”