In 2015, a mine tailings dam failed near the town of Bento Rodrigues, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The collapse spilled about 40 million cubic meters of iron ore mining waste into the landscape, burying villages under mud, killing 19 people and polluting thousands of streams along the River Doce.
One year ago, a Brazilian federal court acquitted the mine’s parent companies, Vale in Brazil and BHP in Australia, of criminal charges, three weeks after they announced a $30 billion settlement with Brazil’s government to pay for damages.
But a High Court in the United Kingdom ruled on Friday that BHP is liable for the dam collapse under Brazil’s environmental and civil law and could be on the hook to pay even more.
“For us it represents a very important milestone,” Mônica dos Santos, a resident of Bento Rodrigues who lost her home and her friends in the Nov. 5, 2015 disaster, said in a video message. It’s about “holding BHP accountable for the crime that occurred” on Nov. 5.
In a statement to Inside Climate News, the president of BHP Americas, Brandon Craig, said that the company intends to appeal the court’s decision and that Brazil is the more appropriate venue through which to provide remediation. He said the payouts already made through the settlement agreement there should reduce the more than 600,000 claimants in the U.K. case by half.
“The court has upheld releases provided in Brazil and 240,000 claimants in the U.K. group action who have already been paid compensation in Brazil have signed full releases,” said Craig.
The British law firm Pogust Goodhead filed the case on behalf of about 620,000 claimants, including individuals, businesses and municipalities seeking up to $47 billion in damages. The case claimed that BHP, a 50 percent owner of the mine’s operator Samarco, was negligent in funding the mine’s expansion even though it knew the Fundão dam was at risk of collapse. They brought the case in the U.K. because one of BHP’s legal entities was registered there at the time.
Caroline Narvaez Leite, legal director at Pogust Goodhead, said that some claimants who had received money from settlements in Brazil may not have waived rights for all of the damages they suffered and that compensation under the lawsuit would have to be assessed on a case by case basis. A trial to assess the damages is scheduled for October.
In a 233-page decision on Friday, Judge Fiona O’Farrell ruled that “the risk of collapse of the dam was foreseeable” and that it was “imprudent” of BHP to continue to raise the dam given the “obvious signs of contractive, saturated tailings and numerous incidents of seepage and cracking.” She wrote that the company was responsible even though it did not directly own and operate the dam.
Leite, said the decision was groundbreaking because it marked the first time that one of the companies has been considered liable since the disaster occurred 10 years ago.