U.S. court reinstates Bhopal water pollution case

A lawsuit contending that thousands of people in India were exposed to polluted drinking water after the 1984 Union Carbide toxic-gas disaster in Bhopal was reinstated on Monday by a U.S. appeals court, which said a lower court improperly threw out the case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York sent the lawsuit back to a Manhattan federal court judge for further proceedings.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court found that the lower court had erred by granting the defendants' request for summary judgment in the case before giving the plaintiffs the opportunity to gain access to certain pretrial documents and other information they had sought.

A December 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide Corp pesticide plant in central India -- the world's worst industrial disaster -- killed an estimated 3,800 people who inhaled toxic fumes, according to figures from the Indian government. Many more have died from gas-related illnesses.

Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical Co, paid $470 million in compensation in 1989. Union Carbide, along with former chief executive Warren Anderson, are defendants in the water pollution lawsuit.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of people who lived or worked near the Bhopal plant who say they suffered ailments including cancer and neurological damage caused by contaminated groundwater. The legal claims were first brought in 1999 after a study by environmental group Greenpeace found widespread water contamination in the area, said Richard Lewis, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs.

"We've waited since 1999 to get our day in court and we look forward to proceeding," Lewis, of law firm Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll, said on Monday.