Word: bellies
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...lawyers. Looking for business. They courted Indian legal experts over leisurely meals in New Delhi's finest hotels. They culled documents at makeshift relief offices outside the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, seeking the names of potential clients. Their motives, the U.S. lawyers insisted, were pure. As Melvin Belli, the flamboyant San Francisco attorney sometimes called the "King of Torts," put it, somewhat inelegantly, "I am here to bring justice and money to those poor little people who have suffered at the hands of those rich sons of bitches." But others saw less admirable reasons for the legal presence...
...earn 30% of the awards they win in a personal-injury case, are hoping to turn the Bhopal gas leak into the most profitable disaster ever. Mega-claims have already been brought against Union Carbide in a number of U.S. jurisdictions where the company does business. Belli is seeking $15 billion in a class action filed in Charleston, W. Va. The Santa Monica, Calif., law firm Gould & Sayre has put in a $20 billion class-action claim in New York City. Coale & Associates of Washington expects to represent thousands of Bhopal victims in a suit that will probably be filed...
...more generous legal grounds on which to base a case. Lawyers can file a suit for negligence, under which a plaintiff would have to prove carelessness on the part of Union Carbide. But more appealing is the doctrine of strict liability, under which negligence need not be proved. Said Belli: "It doesn't matter that you didn't intend to bring harm. What matters is that it happened. In this Bhopal case we can damn well prove that it happened." His plan: "We'll have videotape of all those poor bastards who are sick and dying...
...Union Carbide to pay the same sort of compensation to Bhopal's victims that it would if they were Americans. Those U.S. rates, under which each claimant could typically win $100,000, are considerably higher than their Indian equivalents. At week's end, three American attorneys, including Melvin Belli, filed a lawsuit in Charleston, W. Va., on behalf of Bhopal victims, asking damages of $15 billion. Said a company spokesman in Danbury: "Something like this happens, and people everywhere begin seeing dollar signs in front of their eyes...
Premier then threatened the homeowners with legal action if they did not pay a $300 fee. In response, a group of about 1,200 of the alleged pirates hired the firm of Melvin Belli, the famed attorney whose clients have included Errol Flynn, Mae West and Jack Ruby, to sue the company for invasion of privacy and extortion. Last week Premier filed its own suit against 6,902 people for intercepting its programs. The cases could set precedents for future legal duels between pay-TV companies and air pirates...