No Relief Yet in Bhopal : Compensate Victims While Waiting for Justice

Today is the fourth anniversary of the world’s worst industrial disaster. In the dead of that awful night, 200,000 people tried to flee the poisonous gas that entered their huts near Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. The exact number who died that night is unknown, but it exceeded 2,000. Additional tens of thousands were seriously injured, their lungs seared, their eyes damaged, their ability to work curtailed. And they are still dying, according to government statistics, at a rate of about 400 per year.

For four long years, the Bhopal victims have waited for some relief. None has come from Union Carbide, and precious little from the government. While the issues are being fought out in high-priced court battles (Union Carbide is spending more than $7 million per year on legal fees alone) the victims suffer their illnesses, their poverty, and watch themselves and their loved ones sicken and die.

Long, unrelieved suffering is not peculiar to the victims of the Bhopal accident. It is a pattern to be found in many cases where people have been hurt by corporate actions or operations. Large corporations are loathe to admit liability, for that might mean large settlement costs, as well as indirect costs through loss of consumer and customer confidence. Many corporations find it cheaper to out-wait the victims, by waging protracted and expensive legal battles, until the victims are willing to settle for relatively small sums.

Consider the women who used the Dalkon shield. They have had to wait for years, in many cases more than a decade. Many, particularly those in the Third World, will never receive compensation. It has been 12 years since the first suits were filed.

Think of the victims of asbestos fibers, many of whom worked in the shipyards during World War II. It took a decade for the process to begin working for a portion of the victims. In the meantime, the victims had to face unusual and startling legal maneuvers from one of the principal corporations involved when Johns Mansville filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from the claims, despite the availability of substantial resources. Many of the victims also became bankrupt in reality.

Such delays sometimes seem to be deliberate corporate strategy. By prolonging the suffering and the economic hardship of the victims, corporations can pressure people to settle for smaller sums and, equally important, free themselves from legal responsibility. Frequently, as part of the strategy, corporations have court papers and documents sealed, thus denying potential victims in similar situations important knowledge.

From a corporate standpoint, where the financial bottom-line is the central issue, this strategy is perhaps understandable, or at least predictable. Some argue that prolonged legal battles are needed to sort out the issues and bring the truth to light. But even if these motives are granted, they do not change the terrible fact of the suffering and sickness and death of the victims while legal proceedings drag on. They do not change the fact of the great inequality in the financial resources and staying power that a large corporation can bring to its legal battles, even as the strength ebbs out of the victims.

Out of such misery in Bhopal, and from the lawyer chosen by the victims, has come a compassionate new idea for justice that sees both the search for truth and the suffering of the victims. It is the concept of interim relief. This involves distributing immediately, upon request by a court, a sum of money to the victims, without prejudice to the outcome of the case--that is, without affixing responsibility or blame. Thus the victims’ suffering is alleviated somewhat, while legal proceedings take their course.

In Bhopal, the court hearing the case ordered Union Carbide to pay interim relief of $270 million to thevictims. This sum is less than the $350 million that Union Carbide has offered as settlement, and it is much less than the $3-billion suit that the Indian government has filed on behalf of the victims.

The payment of interim relief would not prejudice Union Carbide’s position since it does not imply any admission of guilt or responsibility. It only recognizes that the victims, all of whom are poor, many of whom are sick and disabled and some of whom are dying, should be helped now.

Yet Union Carbide has not paid this relief. Instead, it is fighting the interim relief order in court. The high court of the state of Madhya Pradesh affirmed the district court’s order but reduced the amount of interim relief to $195 million. The matter is now before India’s Supreme Court. But Union Carbide has let it be known that it will not abide by an order of that court in favor of interim relief unless a U.S. court so directs it. Union Carbide takes this position despite the fact that it chose Indian courts (instead of U.S. courts) as the venue for the proceedings.

rbsci,26p6 Obviously this is an issue of immense importance to the 200,000 victims of the Bhopal tragedy. Disturbing medical evidence is surfacing that the long-term consequences of methyl isocyanate are much worse than was public knowledge at the time of the accident. This evidence comes not only from the deadly roster emerging from Bhopal hospital statistics, but also from considerable research undertaken since the accident in Bhopal and in research institutions around the world.

Interim relief is equally important to the victims of future disasters, where the financially weak and the sick are pitted against the resources of large corporations, caught between the rock of giving up their rights to a just settlement for a small sum quickly and the hard place of a long and literally draining legal struggle.

The Bhopal tragedy triggered a considerable response on the technical side in the United States. Congress passed a right-to-know law that for the first time requires corporations to disclose their emissions to the environment, the safety of their procedures and designs, and their plans in case of an emergency. This is already producing benefits in increased information, which provides citizens with the tools to ensure safer neighboring industrial operations and better emergency preparedness.

Interim relief is the counterpart of the right to know. The right-to-know law has begun to remedy the flaws in emergency preparedness revealed by Bhopal. The prolonged suffering of its victims and of the victims of many other disasters reveals the deficiencies in the ability of current laws to protect victims from the ill effects of prolonged legal battles.

As compassionate human beings, we should urge Union Carbide to pay interim relief. As people concerned with the mitigation of suffering from future accidents, we should press Congress to consider legislation requiring interim relief for victims of disasters in the United States.