A recent ruling by the High Court in London will mean that unsuccessful claimants in the well-publicised Municipio De Mariana & Ors v BHP Group PLC & Anor group action claim will need to make an interim payment of £8m to cover 50% of their opponents legal costs.
In making the ruling, High Court judge Mr Justice Turner said that it was wrong to penalise the defendants for the work done on the case. Justice Turner had already struck out group litigation on behalf of some 202,600 Brazilians last November who were claiming compensation following the collapse of the Fundao dam in Brazil in 2015, saying the task of managing such a case would be ‘irredeemably unmanageable’ if it was allowed to proceed.
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Blog posts tagged in group action claim
An important decision has recently been in the UK’s Volkswagen group litigation claim that is good news for the 91,000 claimants who are seeking compensation from the German motor manufacturer.
...GDPR’s European-wide introduction in May 2018, combined with an increasing awareness of data privacy issues amongst businesses and individuals is likely to result in an increase in data privacy related class action (also known as group action) claims and litigation in the UK.
Now that GDPR – the new, European-wide General Data Protection Regulation – has come into effect from 25th May 2018, observers in the UK legal profession are anticipating an increase in data protection based legal actions, with group / class actions being increasingly likely. Group actions, whereby a group or collective of claimants come together and are represented legally by a member of that group (usually a lawyer, solicitor or law fim), aren’t particularly common in the UK but changes to the Civil Procedure Rules (‘CPR’) back in 1999do allow such actions.
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Is UK litigation becoming more antagonistic?
Whilst Covid-19 may have forced many parts of society to slow down and re-think our approach to all aspects of our lives, recent comments by a number of High Court judges would seem to indicate that this is certainly not happening in civil and commercial litigation. The 3 judges have expressed their disquiet over the ever increasing pervasiveness of hostile and antagonistic approaches to litigation where every point, good or bad, is taken. In the case of Navigator Equities Ltd & Ors v Deripaska from July this year, Mr Justice Andrew Baker said that, in the 30 years in which he had worked in commercial dispute resolution: There has been a significant general increase in hostility and aggressiveness in the conduct of disputes…the taking of any and every point, good or bad, and other failures to display proper independence from the litigating... Read More
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UK's Largest Ever Group Action Claim Thrown Out by High Court
The UK’s largest ever group action litigation action, ostensibly valued at almost £5bn, has been thrown out by the High Court in London with the case having been found to be an abuse of process. The case, Municipio De Mariana & Ors v BHP Group Plc & Anor, involved tens of thousands of Brazilian claimants followed the collapse of the Fundao dam in south eastern Brazil in 2015. The collapse killed 19 people and the subsequent flood wiped out many settlements and villages in its path.High Court judge Mr Justice Turner agreed with the defendants in the case after finding that the court could not handle such a disparate and unmanageable case involving so many claimants. The case was brought by PGMBM, a trading name of Excello Law Limited, on behalf of over 202,000 individual, corporate and institutional claimants against two... Read More
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Class Action Claim Facing £8m Legal Costs Bill
A recent ruling by the High Court in London will mean that unsuccessful claimants in the well-publicised Municipio De Mariana & Ors v BHP Group PLC & Anor group action claim will need to make an interim payment of £8m to cover 50% of their opponents legal costs. In making the ruling, High Court judge Mr Justice Turner said that it was wrong to penalise the defendants for the work done on the case. Justice Turner had already struck out group litigation on behalf of some 202,600 Brazilians last November who were claiming compensation following the collapse of the Fundao dam in Brazil in 2015, saying the task of managing such a case would be ‘irredeemably unmanageable’ if it was allowed to proceed. Read More
