VIENNA (Reuters) - U.S. and Austrian lawyers have filed a lawsuit demanding Thailand, U.S. forecasters and the French Accor group answer accusations they failed in a duty to warn populations hit by December’s Tsunami disaster, a lawyer said Monday.

My first thought here was “this is ridiculous - a lawsuit is being filed against government agencies for failing to warn of a completely unprecedented and unbelievably large-scale disaster.” How on earth can you condemn existing agencies for not anticipating something that is so far outside the realm of previously-known calamities? What chance can this suit have?

Not much. UNLESS, of course, there’s some more evidence. I’ve put together a small list of what might be incriminating enough to make this lawsuit plausible. In order for the suit to succeed, ALL of the following criteria would have to be met:

- If there’d been hard evidence of a long-standing plot by various seismic forces to unleash catastrophic attacks on certain regions.

- If those tectonic cartels had declared their intentions to launch disturbances of that nature.

- If government agencies had received specific and credible intelligence about the forces of nature gathering to strike the Indian Ocean.

- If people in the seismological community had become increasingly concerned over recent months about just such a rupture occurring, and had been submitting reports to this effect, counseling that action be taken.

- If the “chatter” between geological plates had increased dramatically over the months preceding the storm, indicating that something big was in the works.

- If some smaller fault-line had actually been caught studying maps of the region and checking books on geophysics out of the library.

- If President Bush had received a report last year entitled something like “Tsunami determined to strike Indian Ocean.” Something like that.

It doesn’t seem like such a ridiculous suit now, does it? I mean, if all of these things had happened and been documented, and the US and Thai agencies had done nothing, well then it’s clear that the suit would be successful, right? How could it possibly fail?

Of course, that’s not how it happened with the tsunami, to my knowledge. But if it had, why, it’d be a slam dunk.