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United States: Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Decision in Re: Union Carbide Corporation Gas Plant Disaster At Bhopal, India in December 1984

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

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Extract

This decision follows an appeal of the May 1986 District Court decision [25 I.L.M. 771 (1986)] in which 145 consolidated personal injury claims were dismissed on the basis of forum non conveniens. The District Court conditioned its decision By requiring Union Carbide to consent to the jurisdiction of the Indian courts, to agree to any judgment of the Indian courts and to abide by U.S. pretrial procedural rules. The Court of Appeals addressed each of these conditions and modified the District Court's order. In the appeal, attorneys for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak challenged the decision to move the hearings to India, while Union Carbide contended that it is unfair to hold Union Carbide to different standards for discovery of evidence than India would have to follow in the Indian courts.

Type
Judicial and Similar Proceedings
Information
International Legal Materials , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , July 1987 , pp. 1008 - 1020
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1987

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References

* [ Reproduced from the text provided to International Legal Materials by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.]

1 Ucc briefed only the dispositive issue of forum non conveniens before the district court and suggested that the other two grounds for its motion need not be considered. Discovery was therefore limited to the issue of forum non conveniens; and the district court based its dismissal solely on that doctrin.

2 At oral argument UOI's counsel stated that Ucc refused UOI's offer to furnish copies of some of the documents to Ucc in the United States. The district court, on the other hand, found that following the disaster India's Central Bureau of Investigation seized, among other documents, daily, weekly and monthly records of the Bhopal plant operations. Ucc states that of the 78,000 pages of documents seized, some 36,000 are plant operation records, of which 1,700 pages relate to plant maintenance in 1983 and 198.

3 The Indian court's temporary restraining order has since been dissolved upon Ucc's agreement to maintain sufficient assets to satisfy a judgment rendered against it in Indi.

4 Section 5304 provides in pertinent part: “(b) Other grounds for non-recognition. A foreign country judgment need not be recognized if: the foreign court did not have jurisdiction over the subject matter, 1.the defendant in the proceedings in the foreign court did notreceive notice of the proceedings in sufficient time to enable him to defend; 1.the judgment was obtained by fraud; 1the cause of action on which the judgment is based is repugnant to the public policy of this state; 1the judgment conflicts with another final and conclusive judgement; 1.the proceeding in the foreign court was contrary to an agreement between the parties under which the dispute in question was tobe settled otherwise than by proceedings in that court; or 1/in the case of jurisdiction based only on personal service, the foreign court was a seriously inconvenient forum for the trial of the actio.

5 New York's article S3 is based upon the Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act, see 13 U.L.A. 263 (1962), which has been adopted by 15 states in addition to New York. In states that have not adopted the Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act, foreign judgments may be recognized according to principles of comity. See Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U.S. 113 (1895). Ucc, as a New York business corporation, would be subject to personal jurisdiction in a court sitting in New York. An Indian money judgment could be enforced against Ucc in New York by means of either an actionon the judgment or a motion for summary judgment in lieu of complaint. See 7B N.Y. Civ. Prac. L.R. § 5303. In either case, once converted into a New York judgment, the judgment would be enforcible as a New York judgment, and thus entitled to the full faith and credit of New York's sister states. on the judgment or a motion for summary judgment in lieu of complaint. See 7B N.Y. Civ. Prac. L.R. § 5303. In either case, once converted into a New York judgment, the judgment would be enforcible as a New York judgment, and thus entitled to the full faith and credit of New York's sister state.