Latest Hitch in Bhopal Case: Dismissal of Judge

The long-delayed trial of the Bhopal gas leak disaster has suffered another setback with the disclosure that the presiding judge was also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Union Carbide Corp., owner of the Bhopal plant, and could benefit from any judgment against the firm. He has been removed from the case.

Deadly methyl isocyanate gas escaping from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal on Dec. 3, 1984, killed at least 2,000 people in the surrounding area and injured thousands more.

The incident, described as the worst industrial accident in history, resulted in billions of dollars in claims being filed in Indian and U.S. courts. Then, last May, Judge John F. Keenan ruled in a U.S. district court in New York that India provides an “adequate forum” for a fair trial and that the case should be tried in India, with the Indian government as the sole representative of the victims.

Series of Delays

India’s judicial system, Keenan said in his opinion, should be given the “opportunity to stand tall before the world and pass judgment on behalf of its own people.”

Since then, the case has suffered a series of delays, culminating this week with the dismissal of the judge hearing the case, G.S. Patel, whose name was found on a computerized list of plaintiffs against Union Carbide.

“For (Judge Patel) to stay on would have been embarrassing for everyone,” an attorney in the case said.

The most charitable comment in the Indian press was that Patel had “forgotten” about signing a complaint seeking damages for himself and his wife from Union Carbide, which is headquartered in Danbury, Conn. When he discovered his error, one account said, he asked to be removed from the case.

His replacement, M. W. Deo, took over Tuesday, the fourth judge to handle the case.

4 Months to Draft Suit

Delays had begun almost immediately. Indian government attorneys empowered by Parliament to act on behalf of all the plaintiffs took four months to draft a complaint against Union Carbide, which holds 50.9% ownership of the Bhopal plant. The complaint, seeking $3 billion in damages, was not filed until September.

Then the assigned judge, R.M. Rastogi, was transferred. His successor, K. S. Srivastava, was injured in a car accident and was succeeded in November by Patel.

In four months, Patel held pretrial hearings and issued several key orders, including one instructing Union Carbide to set aside $3 billion against the possibility of a judgment against it.

Patel’s conflict of interest and dismissal leaves Union Carbide with the option of asking that all previous proceedings be declared invalid. That could mean further delay, for the court could be forced to start over with pretrial hearings. But an attorney close to the case said, “It might not be political or strategic for Union Carbide to do that.”

Big Backlog of Cases

The Indian government had argued in the United States that India’s judicial system, with a backlog of 10 million cases and delays in civil actions that average 11 years, is not competent to deal with the Bhopal matter.

“Justice for the Bhopal victims can only be secured in the United States,” Indian government attorneys argued before Judge Keenan.

Attorneys for Union Carbide argued that India provides a “more than adequate forum” for the Bhopal case. The corporation may have been influenced by the relatively small judgments commonly awarded negligence victims here. In railroad accident cases, for example, the maximum is 100,000 rupees, about $9,000.

But Union Carbide has developed reservations about Indian courts, based mainly on three factors--Judge Patel’s ruling last fall, reluctantly accepted by Union Carbide, that it set aside $3 billion; a December ruling by the Indian Supreme Court that a New Delhi firm had “absolute liability” in an industrial accident regardless of the cause, and Judge Patel’s recently disclosed conflict of interest.