Kings of Catastrophe

By Michael S. Serrill

During the unseemly scramble among American lawyers to sign up victims of the gas-leak disaster in Bhopal, India, the headlines were studded with the likes of San Francisco's Melvin Belli. But in a Manhattan federal court last week, when the government of India filed what could be the most significant of the Bhopal lawsuits, it was represented by a law firm that had not even sped to the scene. Its name draws a blank among nonlawyers: Robins, Zelle, Larson & Kaplan of Minneapolis. The choice, however, was no surprise to many in the legal profession. In the arcane field of industrial-disaster litigation, Robins Zelle lawyers are considered kings of catastrophe.

The law firm has been involved in some of the past decade's worst calamities: the collapse of Idaho's Teton Dam in 1976 (eleven dead, damage $1 billion), the huge fire at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas in 1980 (85 dead, hundreds injured), and the collapsed skywalks at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel in 1981 (113 dead, 186 hurt). Robins Zelle's latest big victory came last fall with an estimated $38 million settlement for 199 clients injured by the Dalkon Shield IUD.

The Bhopal litigation is expected to dwarf those disputes. Approximately 2,000 people were killed and 200,000 injured by the lethal cloud of methyl- isocyanate gas from a Union Carbide pesticide plant (which the company last week announced will never reopen). "The worst industrial disaster mankind has ever known," charged Robins Zelle's formal complaint. India is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages on behalf of itself, the victims and "future generations of victims."

Negotiations with Union Carbide are already under way; an Indian Cabinet minister told Parliament last week that the corporation's current offer was "ridiculously low." One government source privately suggests that the "ridiculous" proposal was $500 million over 30 years and that the settlement talks would not get serious unless $1 billion were offered over a much shorter period.

After a search by Indian officials, aided by disinterested U.S. attorneys, Robins Zelle was retained for an undisclosed fee, though one of its lawyers says the amount will not be a contingency percentage of the final award. It was "an excellent choice," acknowledges Harry Lipsig of the runner-up Manhattan firm Lipsig, Sullivan & Liapakis. In 1957, Robins Zelle took on its first major industrial-disaster case, involving a fire at a Fuller Brush factory in St. Paul. The firm represented Fuller Brush's insurance company against third parties accused of responsibility for the fire and won a substantial award. A string of similar victories followed, and in the early '70s, Robins Zelle's national reputation was made when it chalked up million-dollar victories for insurance clients in three industrial-explosion cases. Since 1974, the firm has grown from 38 to 152 lawyers, with six offices around the country.

Tough and aggressive, Robins Zelle lawyers "chase no ambulances," says Partner Michael Ciresi; he will run the Bhopal team, seconded by Roger Brosnahan and Bruce Finzen. "Catastrophe cases seem nowadays to come to us," says Ciresi. One reason is the firm's full-time nine-man investigative team (engineers, former FBI experts, ex-firemen), which sometimes is called to the scene of a disaster before the last body has been carried away. Robins Zelle's zealotry for a client has prompted a few charges that it strains at the ethical edges. Last year a federal appeals court accused the firm of a "lack of candor" during a dispute over a key witness in the MGM Grand Hotel insurance litigation. And the Wall Street Journal last week suggested that the firm has a possible conflict of interest in the Bhopal suit because it is legal counsel in another case for one of Union Carbide's insurance companies. Lawrence Zelle, the partner considered a driving force behind the firm's success, denies any conflict "absolutely." The insurance company and the Indian government know about the supposed conflict and have raised no objection, says the firm.

Robins Zelle's selection as India's American counsel has also inspired a different kind of attack, from other lawyers seeking to represent Bhopal victims. Dozens of law firms have filed billions of dollars worth of claims in American courts. But the viability of their suits is in doubt as a result of a special law passed in India earlier this year that provides for government control of all Bhopal litigation. In an effort to push both India and Robins Zelle out of the case, 28 American firms supported a petition to India's Supreme Court last week, charging that the new law usurps the victims' right to sue.

In the U.S., the complex questions of who can sue whom and where are all in the hands of Manhattan Federal Judge John Keenan. He will begin to sort out the mass of lawsuits at hearings this week and could even send the whole matter back to India because both the plant and its victims are there. In India, the legal process is long and lawyers' fees small; most American attorneys would probably drop out. Whatever happens, Robins Zelle has an enviable position. It is no small measure of the firm's shrewdness that it chose its client as carefully as the client chose its legal representative. Except in the unlikely event that India is eliminated as a plaintiff, Robins Zelle is now guaranteed a lucrative front-row seat in the Bhopal drama until it ends.

With reporting by Lee Griggs/Minneapolis and Raji Samghabadi/ New York, with other bureaus