Man’s Efforts to Aid Victims of Bhopal Tragedy Draw Skepticism

Two weeks after the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India, a wealthy Los Angeles property owner named Surya Gupta flew back to his native land to help out victims of the industrial disaster that killed 1,700 and injured more than 200,000 last Dec. 2.

“I was very touched by the pictures of those stacks of bodies in Bhopal,” Gupta said in an interview. “I felt we Americans from India had a social and moral responsibility to help out, and I thought we could establish some sort of relief fund.”

He said he planned to distribute about $25,000 of his own money to survivors. “But after I saw all the people on the streets coughing, I realized that would not be enough,” he said.

Instead, he secured sweeping powers of attorney from thousands of people giving him the right to handle lawsuits for them in the United States. The documents also put him in the position of managing what could amount to tens of millions of dollars in damage claims.

Though Gupta says he will earn no money from his self-styled relief effort, his approach has been greeted with a certain skepticism in India, where his campaign has prompted a lawsuit by a member of the Bhopal Bar Assn., and in Los Angeles, where the city attorney’s office has been fighting him in court for four years over health, fire and building code violations at several slum properties that he owns.

“Mr. Gupta is not one of the worst slumlords in Los Angeles--he is the worst slumlord in Los Angeles,” said Assistant City Atty. John Phillips of the city’s special unit on housing.

“I would very seriously question his sincerity in trying to help out poor victims in Bhopal when he has repeatedly refused to correct the deplorable living conditions of his own poor tenants in Los Angeles. Beyond that, he has no standing to bring any lawsuit for anybody. He’s not a lawyer.”

Gupta said his cases are being handled by three Los Angeles attorneys, who are prosecuting them in conjunction with thousands of other cases against Union Carbide in a proceeding that is now getting under way in federal court in New York City.

It was Gupta’s wholesale distribution of the power of attorney forms that prompted the lawsuit against him in India. The suit, a private criminal complaint filed under provisions of Indian law by Bhopal Bar member Rana Pratap Singh, charges that Gupta circulated illegal power of attorney forms “with intent to receive wrongful gain.”

The complaint also accuses Gupta of knowingly taking advantage of helpless and illiterate Indian citizens who were “unaware of the implications of the powers of attorney” they were signing.

Interviewed at his Hollywood office, Gupta dismissed the new accusations against him in India as “jealousy by Indian lawyers” and the old charges against him in Los Angeles as “baseless.”

He recently filed an inverse condemnation suit against the City of Los Angeles that argues, among other things, that members of the city attorney’s staff created health and fire code violations by encouraging his tenants to vandalize one of his buildings. A hearing is scheduled May 15 to determine whether Gupta should be held in criminal contempt of a court order requiring him to make repairs on the building.

Gupta described his relief effort in Bhopal as a humanitarian program that will net him no profit.

“I promised the people right here on the forms (powers of attorney) that I would not take any money from them,” he said, showing a reporter mimeographed flyers in Hindi that are attached to the English-language power of attorney forms.

The way Gupta tells the story, his relief effort began in mid-December when he traveled to Bhopal. He said he abandoned the notion of setting up a relief fund after he found dozens of American lawyers soliciting business from Bhopal survivors on a contingency basis. Some, he added, planned to charge the victims an hourly fee for their services.

“I felt a way should be found to help the victims for free,” he said. “So I started a program telling these people they shouldn’t have to pay anything, that the lawyers (who represented them) should collect from Union Carbide, not the victims.”

To spread the word about his program, Gupta rented a storefront, took out ads in Bhopal newspapers and broadcast his message through loudspeakers on street corners.

“Free solutions to all your legal problems,” stated one newspaper ad in Hindi. “We will appoint a lawyer for you at our own cost. We will not demand from you a share of your compensation, nor charge you anything for expenses. . . . We will give you a prescribed form free of charge and also provide facilities to fill it out.”

The ad was signed, “In the service of humanity and public interest, Surya Gupta.”

Runners or Volunteers?

Sources in Bhopal said Gupta paid runners a fraction of a penny for every power of attorney form they brought in signed by would-be claimants. Gupta described the runners as unpaid “volunteers who wanted to promote our cause.”

Within two weeks, Gupta said, he had garnered between 10,000 and 12,000 powers of attorney signed by heads of households. Because Indian families are often large, he explained, he estimates that he now represents 60,000 to 70,000 people.

The address on the forms is that of Noori Mehta Trust, the legal entity that owns some of Gupta’s properties in Los Angeles, including the 76-unit apartment building in Hollywood that is the focus of the city’s charges against him.

The powers of attorney, written in English, read in part:

“This special power of attorney shall include, but not be limited to, the right to retain legal counsel, settle any litigation and to execute any and all legal documents, including drafts or checks on behalf of the undersigned.” The forms nullify any prior powers of attorney the victims may have signed.

Though Gupta expects the amount of the claims to vary, he estimates they could average about $10,000 per person. Lawyers often get 20% to 40% of a settlement in personal injury cases. Because of the extent of the Bhopal disaster, the worst industrial accident in history, a New York judge handling the case has expressed hope that lawyers will perform some of their work on a pro bono basis or for free.

At least 85 American attorneys are on record as representing Bhopal victims in federal court in the unusual umbrella proceeding. The sheer number of lawyers who went to Bhopal with a variety of motives to sign up clients has provoked a debate over ethics within the American legal profession. It is believed that thousands of Bhopal residents may have signed powers of attorney over to more than one lawyer.

Gupta said that three Los Angeles attorneys are handling his cases. One of the attorneys, Harvey G. Cooper, who also is representing Gupta in negotiations with the city attorney, works in the same office building with Gupta. Cooper did not return a reporter’s telephone calls.

The other two attorneys, Toxey Hall Smith and Victor Jacobovitz, said that they are working with Gupta only indirectly. Ethics prohibit American attorneys from sharing fees with non-attorneys who have solicited business.