Sharma

EDISON, N.J. — On television and in the movies legal cases seem to progress with ease and reach a resolution quickly. In reality this is far from the norm.

Attorney H. Rajan Sharma can attest to this first hand — after working on a case for years, he is finally celebrating a significant victory.

In June, the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York issued a decision granting certification of a class of at least 3,017 bondholders who purchased Series II India Development Bonds from the State Bank of India. The bonds were issued by the State Bank of India to non-resident Indians throughout the world and had an estimated $1 billion subscription.

With the certification of a class, Sharma can now move forward with a class action lawsuit. The complaint in the lawsuit alleges that the State Bank of India failed to redeem bonds upon the maturity date specified in its terms of offer and seeks damages in the form of interest based upon that delay and compounded annually.

Sharma calls the ruling very significant because he will now be able to move forward and look into the case in more detail and the State Bank of India will have to provide information. Until now, he said, the State Bank of India has predominantly chosen to ignore the complaints regarding the bonds.

"We have had some settlement discussion in the past, but the State Bank of India has taken a pretty hard stance on this," Sharma said. "The don't see it as a significant liability."

"Hopefully we can start getting some answers," he said.

The case has been a long battle, going through several lawyers, so answers have been a long time coming. Sharma came on board in 2003. The five-year bonds were originally issued by the State Bank of India in 1992 and matured on February 15, 1997. A class action suit was originally filed for all bondholders in 1999.

"People invested a lot of money in these bonds, and what happened is nobody got paid on the 15th, some people got paid months later," Sharma said.

Now that all the U.S. bondholders in the case have been certified as a class, Sharma believes there is a good chance of certifying — as a class — all the bondholders around the world involved. He estimates this could be as many as 60,000 bondholders.

He said that pushing for a global class action would be a good move for the case. "The larger the class, the larger the damages awarded," he said. "The size of the class has an impact on the overall liability."

The case also has some legal significance because typically sovereigns are immune to suits and the State Bank of India would fall into this category because it is run by the government.

In addition, the case invokes the Foreign Immunities Act and U.S. courts will normally decline such cases, according to Sharma.

In this case, though, the court is making an exception because India's government, through the State Bank of India, was acting as a commercial party in the United States. The case is being handled in New York because the State Bank of India has a branch office in New York.

Lastly, Sharma said the case is important for the overall significance it would have to Indian businesses and how they act. "Large institutions in India don't play by the rules — they have to," he said.

The case was referred to Sharma because the main plaintiffs were looking for a New York attorney.

"I was glad to take it, and it seemed like a real challenge," Sharma said. "It had a connection to India, which was interesting to me also."

A graduate of American University School of Law in Washington, D.C., Sharma has been running his own law firm, the Law Offices of H. Rajan Sharma in Edison, N.J., since 2002. In 2001, he was a senior attorney at McCallion & Associates LLP in New York. Prior to that, he was an associate at Goodkind Labaton Rudoff & Sucharow LLP, also in New York.

Sharma was born in New Delhi, but spent most of his childhood in Houston. He is a 1993 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and political science.

Sharma has found success with his practice on U.S.-India business litigation matters and international commercial litigation, so it is an area he is familiar with. For example, he recently represented the National Bank of Bangladesh in litigation against Western Union.

"This kind of thing is right up my alley because it is international and commercial litigation," he said.

According to him, he gets a lot of inquiries about U.S.-India legal issues and has built up a lot of contacts with Indian lawyers. Still, India's legal system remains the main challenge.

"Usually you can't litigate anything in India — it is almost impossible to litigate there," he said. "Businesses generally prefer to litigate outside of India, whether it is a U.S.-based or India-based business."