NEW YORK— Union Carbide Corp., pressing its argument that the proper forum for cases arising out of the Bhopal chemical disaster is India, Friday moved for a dismissal of the dozens of lawsuits find in the United States.
In a petition filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, supported by several affidavits from prominent Indian lawyers. Union Carbide said “to argue that India cannot or will not properly handle these claims is ridiculous.”
“The Indian Supreme Court is reputed to be the most powerful court in the world and has on numerous occasions effectively handled extraordinary cases far more complex than these,” Carbide said.
Billions of dollars in legal claims have been filed against Carbide in the wake of the Dec. 3, 1984, accident at the company’s Bhopal pesticide plant that left some 2,000 people dead and thousands injured.
Billions of dollars in legal claims against Union Carbide by victims still have not been settled.
The scientific report was submitted to the Parliament by the Director Gene; 1 of India’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
It concluded that “insufficient caution in design, in choice of materials of construction and in instruments, together with lack of facilities for safe effective quick disposal of materials showing instability, contributed to the event.”
The report was based on work by Varadarjan and several teams of Indian scientists who began collecting data Dec. 5, 1984 at the disaster site on the outskirts of the city, 375 miles south of New Delhi.
“These designs were clearly fatuity and the safety guaranteed by the design was illusory and did not exist,” the report said.
Earlier scientific reports said water could have entered a holding tank containing the poisonous liquid, triggering a reaction that caused the tank to burst and) release its contents into the atmosphere.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 27, 1985
