Investors Seek Profits by Helping Poor People Sue Big Companies
A litigation finance boom is backing class-action suits on behalf of some of the world’s most marginalized communities.
Mud-covered debris in Brazil after the Samarco mine collapse in 2015.
Photo: Reuters/Alamy Stock Photo
Anderson Krenak, 38, is a member of the indigenous Krenak people who live along the banks of the River Doce in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. On Nov. 5, 2015, his life changed forever when a mining company’s dam collapsed, unleashing a torrent of mud filled with mine waste into the surrounding countryside and waterways, destroying the Krenak heartland. The flood killed 19 people and spread pollution hundreds of miles to the Atlantic.
With his old way of life through fishing and hunting now impossible, Anderson is seeking compensation as one member of a 200,000-strong suit in the UK that’s demanding $7 billion in damages from Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Group Ltd., which owns half of Samarco, the company that owned the dam. “It’s not just a matter of getting a financial compensation, but of sending a message that miners cannot come to our country to do damage,” he says.