Word: bhopal
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After a cloud of deadly methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed more than 1,700 people and injured an additional 200,000 in December 1984, American law firms representing the victims filed suit in the U.S. Damage awards are generally much lower in India than in the U.S., and Carbide, not surprisingly, argued that the case should be handled in that country. In Manhattan last week, U.S. District | Court Judge John Keenan ruled that because nearly all the witnesses and evidence are in India, the suit should be heard there...
...moment, it looked as if the legal clouds were finally lifting from the worst industrial disaster in history. Union Carbide said last week that it had reached a settlement with attorneys for the victims of the December 1984 chemical-leak catastrophe at the company's plant in Bhopal, India. The Danbury, Conn.-based firm (1985 revenues: $9 billion) agreed to pay $350 million in damages for the disaster, which killed at least 1,758 people and may have injured up to 300,000 others...
...Bhopal victims' American attorneys, who include F. Lee Bailey of Boston and Stanley Chesley of Cincinnati, apparently decided that the settlement offer was preferable to the possibility that the case might eventually be transferred out of U.S. courts to India. There, a judgment would be limited by the size of Union Carbide's Indian subsidiary, which has only $80 million in assets, compared with the parent company's $10.6 billion...
...judge hearing the Bhopal case, John Keenan of the federal district court of New York, has expressed skepticism about the settlement, and Carbide has opened new negotiations with the Indian government. Whatever the outcome, Union Carbide Chairman Warren M. Anderson, 64, will soon put the Bhopal ordeal behind him. Last week the company named Robert D. Kennedy, 53, the president of Carbide's chemicals and plastics division, as Anderson's successor. Anderson, who had been planning to retire just before the Bhopal tragedy struck, will step down in November...
Johnson & Johnson's previous experience with disaster had taught it the value of a spreading corporate discipline known as crisis management. Many other companies have learned the hard way that catastrophe can come from nowhere at any time: the lethal gas leak at Union Carbide's Bhopal plant in India in 1984, the 1981 collapse of two skywalks in the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel. But more and more firms are not waiting until calamity strikes to think about what they would do. Instead, they are developing detailed plans to cope with such crises as industrial accidents, product recalls...