Are there any Personal Injury/Asbestos Attorneys in India?

trostlaw 24 Jan 2010, 04:36

I am visiting northern India in March. I am a US attorney who practices personal injury/asbestos litigation. I also write a blog, www.trostreport.com, about legal marketing for personal injury attorneys.

I have been told that no Indian attorneys represent personal injury victims because Indian law does not give injury victims any significant rights and because Indian lawyers have no financial incentive to practice this area of law.

I cannot believe this is true. There must be some Indian advocates who focus their practice on helping common people. If there are, I would like to meet them when I visit.

Let me know.

Scott Trost

314-799-3008

(trostlaw[at-the-rate-of]gmail[dot]com)

4 Replies

AnonymousLLB 25 Jan 2010, 13:16

Hi Scott,

Tort law is not as developed in India as it is in the United States. The compensation that a plaintiff gets in tort actions is quite negligible. One of the reasons for this is perhaps because we do not have the jury system in India. That’s the reason why cases related to negligence, IIED, NIED, invasion of privacy, fraud, misrepresentation, and even defamation are pretty rare in India. Most of the personal injury cases relate to motor vehicle accident claims and medical negligence. You will find hundreds of plaintiffs lawyers who “specialize” in motor accident claims. Most of them are ambulance chasers. Medical negligence cases are invariably filed before the consumer courts, but I have not heard of any lawyer who specializes in representing the plaintiff in medical negligence matters. Again, the percentage of success in medical negligence cases is pretty low. One of the reasons for this is because very rarely does the plaintiff (complainant) introduce expert evidence to substantiate his/her claim.

It’s a snowflakes chance in hell that you will find an attorney in India who practices asbestos litigation. Chances are that you will be asked “asbestos litigation? What’s that??”

Trust this helps.

Regards,

“Legal Dodo”

trostlaw 27 Jan 2010, 05:06

Thanks for the reply but I hope you are wrong.

It is hard for me to imagine that a country that produced civil rights lawyers such as Mohandas Gandhi, Motilal Nehru and many others does not have a strong contingent of modern-day lawyers advocating for the rights of workers killed by exposure to asbestos.

We have 3000 people a year dying of mesothelioma each year in the United States. And the numbers suffering from Asbestosis and other illnesses due to exposure to asbestos is greater than that. I don’t know what the numbers are in India but, from what I have heard, they may be as large if not larger.

Certainly there must be advocates of the law who are pursuing claims on behalf of these people.

Scott Trost

314-799-3008

AnonymousLLB 27 Jan 2010, 10:12

Hi Scott,

I distinguished between civil rights lawyers and personal injury lawyers in my previous reply. Yes - there are civil rights lawyers (but I’ve personally not heard of any asbestos litigation or asbestos litigation lawyer yet). The two organizations that spring to mind immediately are Lawyers’ Collective in Delhi and Alternate Law Forum in Bangalore (see www.altlawforum.org) . ALF provides legal support for people marginalized on the basis of class, race, caste, gender, disability or sexuality.

All the best.

Legal Dodo

AnonymousLLB 19 Aug 2014, 21:58

Scott, did you ever find out if there were any lawyers in India helping meso victims?

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