Principle of Absolute Liability: Bhopal Gas Disaster case and Shree Ram Food

Picture a chemical plant on the MIDC belt near Mumbai. One night a valve fails and a cloud drifts over the nearest chawl. The company swears its safety audit was perfect and that the failure was a freak. Under the old English rule it might have pleaded exactly that and walked away lighter. India decided, after two real disasters, that a company which profits from danger cannot. What rule replaced it, and what happens to the victims in the meantime?

In two minutes

Absolute liability is the rule, laid down by the Supreme Court in M.C. Mehta v Union of India (1987), that an enterprise engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity is liable to compensate everyone harmed by it, with no exceptions and no defence that it took all reasonable care.

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