$14 m: What a US Citizen got from Union Carbide

$800: What Indian victims of the Bhopal gas leak got on average.

An American life is 17,000 times more valuable than an Indian’s, going by what Union Carbide has had to pay for doing irreparable damage to a human being. On 20 May, a jury in a Miami-Dade county court in Florida awarded $14 million to 59-year-old William Aubin after it was proven that his exposure to asbestos fibres manufactured by Union Carbide while working in a construction company in the 1970s eventually led to peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare incurable cancer.

Compare that to what Indian victims of the Bhopal gas leak were offered. The total settlement was $470 million, and the number of awarded victims 574,369, which means on average just above $800 each.

According to Aubin’s lawyer, Juan P Bauta of The Ferraro Law Firm in Miami, Union Carbide is facing hundreds, if not thousands, of asbestos-related litigations in the US.

Bauta says, “Union Carbide knew of the dangers associated with asbestos as early as the 1930s and failed to warn people like Mr Aubin. We have numerous internal documents which establish Union Carbide’s culture of deceit to not only its customers, but also to governmental agencies. The internal documents clearly demonstrate a company policy of misleading people about the dangers and aggressively marketing their products.”

Bauta thinks the compensation amount paid in the Bhopal gas leak is unreasonable. “If Bhopal had occurred in the US, company executives would be looking at jail sentences and a dramatically larger sum of money would have been required to compensate the individuals affected. I think such a monumental catastrophe would likely have been fatal to Union Carbide if it had occurred in the US,” he says.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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