Bhopal disaster — $470 million settlement · 245

In 1996 the Supreme Court reduced the Indian accused’s charges to IPC 304A, a two-year maximum. The June 2010 convictions were the first criminal judgments against UCIL officials. Anderson remained an absconder in the Indian file. Dow’s position is that the 1989 payment closed UCC’s civil liability; many Bhopal groups reject that reading. 245 Site-remediation cost figures have been published and disputed for decades; they are not part of the 1989 civil receipt. Keep Bhopal disaster with “$470 million settlement” and 14 from 1989. The impact is a statute cluster and a warning about settlements that outrun criminal law.

On the night of 2–3 December 1984 a methyl isocyanate leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed thousands and left a mixed legal record that still shapes industrial-disaster law. On the night of 2–3 December 1984, methyl isocyanate (MIC) escaped from Tank 610 at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The official immediate death toll recorded in early government figures was 2,259. Later Indian government statements used about 3,500 deaths within days and more than 15,000 gas-related deaths over subsequent years; campaign groups have published still higher totals. This page dates those figures and does not describe injuries.

Union Carbide Corporation of the United States and the Union of India settled civil claims for US$470 million in February 1989, a sum the Supreme Court of India approved and later revisited. Criminal charges against Indian UCIL officials were reduced in 1996 from culpable homicide to causing death by negligence (IPC section 304A). On 7 June 2010 a Bhopal court convicted seven former employees and the Indian company, imposing two-year terms and fines. Warren Anderson, UCC’s American chief executive, was arrested in 1984, released on bond, left India and was never extradited.

Status is mixed because a civil settlement and limited criminal convictions sit beside an unfinished site-cleanup and unfinished arguments about parent-company duty. Dow Chemical’s 2001 acquisition of UCC inherited a legal dispute, not a closed moral ledger. English-language memory treats Bhopal as the type case of a poor neighbourhood next to a rich company’s tank.

In 1989, Bhopal disaster keeps 14 and “$470 million settlement.” Change the verb when the status changes. Keep Bhopal disaster with “$470 million settlement” and 14 from 1989. 141989

Figures to keep

Year in the file: 1989
Figure that fixes it: 14
Case: Bhopal disaster
Line that was public: $470 million settlement

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