BHP is facing a demand for at least £189 million in legal costs after a UK court ruled last month that the mining giant was liable for Brazil’s 2015 Mariana dam collapse, the country’s worst environmental disaster, which killed 19 people.
Lawyers representing victims told the High Court in London on Wednesday that they were the clear overall winners in the November liability ruling and that BHP should be required to make an immediate interim payment toward costs. According to the Financial Times, the claim ranks among the largest legal cost demands in British history.
The requested amount includes legal fees as well as about £44 million spent on walk-in centres and call centre operations used to communicate with roughly 620000 affected people. The court has already determined that BHP must pay at least part of the costs immediately following the liability decision.
A second trial is scheduled for October 2026 to assess damages related to a £36 billion claim, which is believed to be the largest ever brought before an English court. BHP is seeking permission to appeal the liability ruling and has described the scale of the cost demand as excessive.
In written submissions, BHP’s lawyers argued that the claimants failed to properly justify the breakdown of their costs and asked the court to exclude substantial portions of the claim. They also rejected as unreasonable a request for an interim payment of 60%, or about £113 million, before a final ruling on costs.
The case has attracted close attention within the legal sector, particularly after tensions emerged between the claimants’ law firm, Pogust Goodhead, and its litigation funder late in the proceedings. BHP has argued that the firm’s funders spent large sums without sufficient regard for proportionality, a factor it says is reflected in the scale of the cost claim.
BHP is also urging the court to delay any decision on costs until after the damages phase, maintaining that overall success cannot yet be determined because liability has only been established in principle. The dispute echoes a recent Australian ruling linked to the same dam collapse, where a court allowed law firms in a shareholder class action to significantly increase their share of settlement fees, raising broader concerns over transparency and oversight in large-scale litigation.
