Union Carbide Corp

Union Carbide Corp. has agreed to pay $500 million in compensation to survivors of the 1984 gas leak disaster in a tentative out-of-court settlement with the Indian government, sources said Monday. The sources, who asked not to be identified, said the sum would be paid out over a 10-year period, but an announcement of the settlement will not be made until next month to give time for details to be worked out.

India's new prime minister said Sunday that his government will reinstate criminal liability charges against Union Carbide Corp. if the country's Supreme Court overturns the previous $470-million settlement of the Bhopal poison-gas disaster. "My government has decided in principle to review the settlement and to support petitions filed before courts by voluntary groups for its review," Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who became prime minister Dec. 2, told reporters.

Union Carbide Corp. announced Thursday that it will seek to restructure its three worldwide businesses, forming separately incorporated companies with the corporation serving as a holding company. Robert D. Kennedy, chairman, also unveiled plans to spend $450 million to expand, improve and add product lines. Kennedy revealed the new strategies after the board of directors approved a management recommendation seeking the new structuring.

The government of India filed criminal charges, including "culpable homicide," Tuesday against Union Carbide Corp., nine employees and two of its foreign affiliate firms for the 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India, that killed 2,800 people. Besides the homicide count, the government charged the companies and employees with causing injuries and with lesser related crimes in connection with the leak, which injured tens of thousands of people and was the world's worst industrial accident.

Art Valdez spent 26 years working in the dust in the nation's last asbestos mill, pulling down $17.85 an hour before the place shut down last year. He had a pension and five weeks' paid vacation. He had health insurance for his family. He could afford to give cars to his two boys, visit friends in Texas and take his wife to Denny's as often as he wished. "I didn't know what asbestos was," he recalled recently. "I thought that was the best job ever."

The long-delayed trial of the Bhopal gas leak disaster has suffered another setback with the disclosure that the presiding judge was also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Union Carbide Corp., owner of the Bhopal plant, and could benefit from any judgment against the firm. He has been removed from the case. Deadly methyl isocyanate gas escaping from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal on Dec. 3, 1984, killed at least 2,000 people in the surrounding area and injured thousands more.

The $470-million damage award levied by the Supreme Court of India against Union Carbide for the 1984 Bhopal disaster is adequate by Indian standards but low by American standards. That's one reason that corporate and government officials, both in India and the United States, wanted the case tried and settled in India. The money is only one of the ironies and lessons of the Bhopal settlement that are worth considering as more U.S. companies do business abroad and foreign companies come here.

Union Carbide Corp. agreed Tuesday to pay $470 million in compensation to victims of the 1984 pesticide leak from its plant in Bhopal, India, that killed 3,330 people and ranks as history's worst industrial disaster. The chemical company will pay the sum to the Indian government in a settlement directed by the Indian Supreme Court and ending four years of legal wrangling in the United States and India.

To hear Kelly-Moore's lawyer tell it, the Union Carbide salesmen had their mantra down: Don't worry, they'd say, don't worry. Union Carbide Corp. was one of the companies that supplied Kelly-Moore Paint Co. of San Carlos, Calif., with the asbestos used as a thickening agent in its products.

Sunil Verma just wants to be left by himself. He doesn't trust strangers. Companionship is a creeping terror. Almost 17 years ago, a toxic cloud drifted from the Union Carbide pesticide plant here, turning the air lethal and the leaves black. It killed seven members of Verma's family, including his parents, and he still lives in fear of demons he cannot see. "I hear sounds in my mind," Verma said through an interpreter. "I only feel like staying in a lonely room.