Pietro Grassi, Chiraag Shah, Gareth Rees, and Stephanie Pong authored an article for Thomson Reuters’ Practical Law Dispute Resolution Blog using the recent English High Court case of Municipio de Mariana v BHP Group Plc to discuss the trend of English courts being open to considering claims of alleged violations of business and human rights (BHR) abroad.
“The importance of this judgment is to set out a limitation to the possibility of pursuing BHR claims in England connected to events overseas,” the authors wrote. “Where a case is well underway in the jurisdiction of the alleged violation and there are good reasons to believe the claimants will have a fair shot at achieving substantive justice, the English courts would be unwilling to open the floodgates to accepting jurisdiction.”
They added that “based on the wording of the judgment, this consideration does not seem to be limited to BHR claims, but to any claim,” and noted that “had the circumstances of this case been different (for example, had the High Court found that there was no possibility of achieving substantive justice in Brazil), the court may have been more willing to accept jurisdiction.”
Read the full article.