Well Argued · Advocate

F. S. Nariman: the advocacy that left a mark

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Fali Sam Nariman (1929 to 2024) was one of the most celebrated advocates the Indian Bar has produced. Among the many cases of his long career, one remains the most discussed and the most uncomfortable: he appeared for Union Carbide Corporation in the litigation that followed the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, the worst industrial disaster in India's history. This is an editorial profile focused on that episode and on what Nariman himself later wrote about it. It is a recognition of a legacy and a study in professional conscience, not an endorsement.

01The disaster and the brief

On the night of 2 to 3 December 1984, a leak of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal killed thousands of people and injured many more. The human toll, and the long fight over responsibility and compensation, made Bhopal a wound in the national memory that has not closed.

In the litigation that followed, Union Carbide Corporation needed counsel in India. It briefed Fali S. Nariman, by then among the foremost senior advocates in the country. For an advocate at the height of his reputation to appear for the company at the centre of such a tragedy was, and remains, one of the most debated decisions in modern Indian legal history.

This is an editorial profile written for readers who think seriously about advocacy. It is not legal advice.

02Why a great advocate took the case

The question that has followed Nariman ever since is simple to ask and hard to answer: how could a lawyer of his stature appear for the company blamed for Bhopal? The profession's answer rests on an old principle, the idea that every party, however unpopular, is entitled to be represented, and that a lawyer who takes a brief is not endorsing the client but ensuring the case is properly tested.

Nariman himself returned to this question in later life and did not hide from it. He accepted that he had taken the brief, set out his reasons, and reflected on what the experience had taught him. That willingness to examine his own choice, in public and in print, is itself a mark of the seriousness he brought to the profession. An advocate reckoning honestly with the hardest case of his career is exactly the kind of story that deserves to be seen and discussed.

03The argument and the settlement

The Bhopal litigation moved between the United States and India and turned on difficult questions of jurisdiction, liability and the measure of compensation for a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. In February 1989 the Supreme Court of India approved a settlement under which Union Carbide was to pay about 470 million United States dollars in full and final settlement of the claims.

The settlement was, and remains, deeply controversial. Many believed the sum was far too small for the scale of the harm, and litigation over its adequacy and over criminal responsibility continued for years afterward. The debate is not settled even now, and this profile does not take a side on it. Its subject is the advocate, not the adequacy of the result.

04What he wrote afterwards

Nariman addressed the Bhopal episode in his memoir, Before Memory Fades, published in 2010. He was candid about his role and about the discomfort it caused him, and he reflected on the limits of what a lawyer can control once a case is in the hands of the court and the parties.

That he chose to write about it at all is significant. Many lawyers would have preferred to let a difficult chapter fade. Nariman instead put it on the record, treating his own hardest decision as a subject worth examining honestly for the benefit of the profession that would come after him. The reflection is part of why the episode is studied rather than merely remembered.

05The ethics of an unpopular brief

The Bhopal case is taught, in part, because it frames one of the central ethical questions of advocacy. In the common law tradition there is a principle sometimes called the cab-rank rule: a barrister, like a taxi at the front of the rank, should not refuse a client merely because the client or the cause is unpopular. The reasoning is that if lawyers could pick only sympathetic clients, the disliked and the accused would go undefended, and the system of justice would fail precisely where it is most needed.

Set against that is the lawyer's own conscience, and the public's sense of justice. When the client is the company at the centre of a disaster that killed thousands, the principle and the feeling collide. There is no tidy resolution, and Nariman did not pretend there was one. What he offered instead was honesty: an acknowledgment that the choice was hard, that reasonable people would judge it differently, and that an advocate must be willing to live with, and to explain, the briefs he accepts.

This is why the episode endures as a case study. It is not a story with a hero and a villain; it is a story about the genuine difficulty at the heart of the lawyer's role, told by a great advocate who was willing to sit inside that difficulty rather than wish it away.

It is worth separating two questions that are easy to run together. One is whether the Bhopal victims were done justice, a question that turns on the size of the settlement, the delays and the fate of the criminal proceedings, and on which many people hold strong and reasonable views. The other is whether an advocate acts wrongly by representing the company in that litigation. The first is a question about the outcome; the second is a question about the role of the lawyer. Confusing them leads to the conclusion that unpopular clients should have no good lawyers, which is precisely the result the profession's ethics are designed to prevent.

06What the episode teaches

For younger advocates the Bhopal argument carries a double lesson. The first is that representation is not endorsement, and that the right to counsel means little if it evaporates whenever a client is condemned in the court of public opinion. The second is that the principle does not dissolve the advocate's responsibility to think, to choose and to answer for the choice.

Nariman held both of these at once, and he never used the first to escape the second. That is the mature version of professional conscience: not a rule that excuses every brief, and not a squeamishness that would leave the unpopular undefended, but a willingness to decide carefully and to stand behind the decision in public. This profile records that example with respect, as a recognition of a legacy and a contribution to how the profession thinks, and not as an endorsement of any client or result.

07Related profiles

This piece focuses on a single episode. For the full arc of the man, and for a contemporary, see two more profiles in the Well Argued series:

• Fali S. Nariman, the full profile of the jurist and senior advocate.
• K. Parasaran, senior advocate and former Attorney General.

08About Well Argued

Well Argued is a free, curated publication by Claw that gives an advocate a hard-won court victory an audience, turning a winning judgement into a short, well-told story that Claw shares across its social channels, its website and the AI answer engines. The Bhopal episode is remembered, and debated, because the advocate at its centre set his reasoning down for others to weigh. Good advocacy, and honest reflection on hard choices, still happens across India every week, and most of it is never seen beyond the cause list. Recording work that deserves to be seen is exactly what Well Argued exists to do.

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