A federal judge's ruling that the damage suits arising out of the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal , India, should be tried in the courts of that country makes sense.

As U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan pointed out, the Indian legal system "is in a far better position than the American courts to determine the cause of the tragic event and thereby fix liability." India's courts, the judge said, "have the proven capacity to mete out fair and equal justice." The logistics of trying the cases abroad boggles the mind.

The Bhopal disaster resulted in about 2,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 200,000 injuries. It is a complex case that will be in the courts a long time. The place for settling the matter is in the readily accessible judicial system of the country where the accident happened and where the litigants live.