Settlement or Litigation? For Union Carbide, That Is the Question

Abstract

Inevitably, in the two months since the Bhopal disaster, attention has shifted from the misery of the victims to the dry facts of what happened. Those who are immersed in the Bhopal aftermath—Union Carbide, governments, judiciary, attorneys, other chemical companies—generally agree there are two chief goals on which to focus: compensating the victims and making sure, by improving chemical safety practices, that an industrial accident of the magnitude of that at Bhopal never takes place again. What these parties cannot agree upon at this point, unsurprisingly, is how those goals should be met. For Union Carbide, resolving the compensation question is the issue of the moment. Until that is accomplished, the company will keep its front-page notoriety, its management's attention will be distracted, its stock price will remain the unstable correlative of news reports, its debt rating will remain downgraded, and its legal bill will keep rising. The accident already has hit Carbide in ...