Global mining giant BHP has lost an appeal in a London court that sought to block a £5billion lawsuit by 200,000 Brazilians over a 2015 dam failure that triggered the South American country’s worst environmental disaster.
In what claimant lawyers described as a ‘monumental judgment’, the Court of Appeal overturned previous judgments and ruled that the group legal claim could proceed in the UK.
The lawsuit will be one of the largest ever to be contested in the English courts.
Disaster: The collapse of the Fundao dam killed 19 people as more than 40m cubic metres of mud and mining waste swept into the Doce river
‘The days of huge corporations doing what they want in countries on the other side of the world and getting away with it are over,’ said Tom Goodhead, managing partner of law firm PGMBM, which represents Brazilian individuals, businesses, churches and municipalities. BHP, the world’s largest mining company by market value with shares listed in London and Sydney, said it would consider a Supreme Court appeal.
The collapse of the Fundao dam, owned by the Samarco venture between BHP and Brazilian iron ore mining giant Vale, killed 19 people as more than 40m cubic metres of mud and mining waste swept into the Doce river, obliterating villages and reaching the Atlantic Ocean more than 400 miles away.
The lawsuit is the latest to establish whether multinational companies can be held liable on their home turf for the conduct of overseas subsidiaries, emulating cases brought in London against miner Vedanta and oil giant Shell over alleged pollution and oil spills in Africa.
BHP has dismissed the case as pointless and wasteful, saying it duplicates legal proceedings and reparation and repair programmes in Brazil, which will already cost nearly £5billion.
But claimant lawyers argue most clients have not brought proceedings in Brazil or sought compensation that excludes them from English proceedings, and that Brazilian litigation is too lengthy to provide full redress in a realistic period of time.
The case had a turbulent start after both the High Court and, initially, the Court of Appeal had blocked it for being ‘irredeemably unmanageable’.
But yesterday, senior judges said there was a realistic prospect of a future trial yielding a ‘real and legitimate advantage’ for claimants.
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