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- 🚪 Why 400,000 clients just tried to sack their law firm
🚪 Why 400,000 clients just tried to sack their law firm
Ahad Rahim & Idin Sabahipour
September 09, 2026
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If you take just one thing from this email...
Roughly 400,000 Brazilians are suing the mining company BHP in London over a dam that collapsed in 2015. Last week, a small committee chosen to represent them said it had sacked their law firm, Pogust Goodhead, and hired Bailey Glasser International instead.
Pogust Goodhead says the committee can't do that. No judge gave the committee its power. It only has the power the claimants gave it when they signed a contract.
So when 400,000 people share one lawyer, "the client" is whoever the contract says can give instructions. If you sack the firm, the first question is not whether the clients are unhappy, but whether the contract lets you do it.
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🚪 Why 400,000 clients just tried to sack their law firm (but the firm says they can't)
What’s going on here?
Roughly 400,000 Brazilians are suing BHP, a large mining company, in London. Most of them are represented by a client committee, a small group of claimant representatives who take decisions for the rest. Last week, that committee said it had sacked the law firm Pogust Goodhead and appointed Bailey Glasser International (BGI) instead.
Pogust Goodhead says the committee can’t sack it on behalf of the whole group and that it remains formally named as the claimants’ law firm on the court record.
Why are 400,000 people suing BHP?
In November 2015, a dam holding back waste from an iron-ore mine near the Brazilian city of Mariana collapsed.
A huge wave of mud swept through nearby communities, killing 19 people, destroying villages and polluting hundreds of miles of rivers. 👇
The mouth of the Rio Doce after the collapse. Image: Centro TAMAR-ICMBio, via SWOT Report.
Samarco, a company partly owned by BHP, ran the mine. Hundreds of thousands of people, businesses and communities say the collapse harmed them.
Pogust Goodhead entered the story in 2018. The firm, then called SPG Law, worked with lawyers and local contacts in Brazil to sign up affected people as clients. In November 2018, it started an English court case on their behalf.
🤔 How could people in Brazil sue BHP in England under Brazilian law?
Claimants can’t bring a case in England just because they want to. The defendant has to have a link to England.
At the time, BHP had two parent companies, one in England and one in Australia. The English company could be sued here because that’s where it was based. The Australian company could be sued here because it did business in England, so court papers could be delivered to its English offices.
BHP argued that the dispute belonged in Brazil. The High Court initially stopped the English case, but the Court of Appeal allowed it to continue in 2022.
Being heard in England doesn’t mean English law decides the case. In cross-border claims, courts usually apply the law of the country where the damage happened. So English judges used Brazilian law to decide whether BHP was responsible, while English rules governed how the case was run.
The claim began with around 235,000 people and organisations and later grew beyond 620,000. Some claimants have since accepted compensation in Brazil and left, bringing the number down to roughly 400,000.
How do 400,000 people act as one client for Pogust Goodhead?
Each claimant had their own right to seek compensation.
Bringing separate cases would repeat arguments about BHP’s responsibility, the damage caused, legal work and expert evidence, which many couldn’t afford alone.
Mariana is therefore a multi-party action – each claimant opted in and was named, but the claims are managed together. We explain the other types of group litigation in our article on Vodafone’s £85 million lawsuit.
Asking 400,000 people to vote on every deadline, piece of evidence or settlement offer would be impossible, so the group needs one system for giving instructions.
How is group litigation organised?
The claimants needed a system that answered three questions:
Who owns the claims?
How will the lawyers be paid?
Who can make decisions for the group?
👥 The claimants still own their individual claims. Joining the group didn’t turn roughly 400,000 people into one legal person. Each claimant is still asking for compensation for their own losses. Bringing the claims together simply allows the lawyers to deal with the questions they share, such as whether BHP was responsible for the dam’s collapse. It also allows the cost of gathering evidence and hiring experts to be spread across the group. Some organisations (including certain municipalities and businesses) signed separate agreements – they sit outside parts of the collective structure.
⚖️ Pogust Goodhead agreed to work before knowing whether it would be paid. Most claimants signed a Collective Conditional Fee Agreement (or CCFA), while municipalities and some businesses signed separate agreements, including Damages-Based Agreements (DBAs).
🤔 What are CCFAs and DBAs?
Both mean the lawyer’s payment depends on a case’s outcome and can let a claimant begin without paying the full legal bill upfront.
The difference is how payment is calculated:
→ Collective Conditional Fee Agreement: some or all of the firm’s normal fees are paid only if the claim succeeds, and the firm may receive an extra success fee on top. A collective CFA applies that arrangement to a whole group.
For example, a firm agrees to charge nothing if the claim fails, and its normal £100,000 in fees plus a £50,000 success fee if it wins.
Most Mariana claimants signed one.
→ Damages-Based Agreement: the firm receives an agreed percentage of any compensation, and usually nothing if the claimant recovers nothing.
For example, a firm agrees to take 25% of whatever the claimant wins, so a £1 million award means a £250,000 fee.
Municipalities and some businesses signed separate agreements, including DBAs, which places them outside parts of the main group structure.
🗳️ A client committee was created to make decisions for most of the group. Under a second contract, called the Litigation Management Agreement or LMA, claimants agreed that a smaller group of representatives could make certain strategic decisions and instruct Pogust Goodhead for them.
The committee contains representatives from different communities and parts of Brazil. They were not appointed by a judge. Their authority comes from the LMA contract, so they can only make decisions that the contract allows.
💰 Someone had to provide the money needed to keep the firm working. Group litigation is expensive long before anyone receives compensation. Pogust Goodhead had to pay its lawyers, experts, translators and other costs while it waited to be paid.
🤔 What is a litigation funder?
A litigation funder is a company that provides money to help run a legal claim. If the case succeeds, it receives an agreed return from the money recovered. If it fails, the funder risks losing its money.
Gramercy, a hedge fund, helped finance the case through two large arrangements. In 2023, it made a $553 million loan to Pogust Goodhead. In June 2026, it provided up to another $150 million, beginning with an $85 million payment, solely for the Mariana litigation.
How did Pogust Goodhead get the case this far?
The first stage of the trial ran from October 2024 to March 2025 and dealt with the questions shared by the whole group – particularly whether BHP was legally responsible for the collapse.
In November 2025, the High Court ruled that it was. There were two reasons for this.
🏭 BHP counted as a “polluter”, even though Samarco owned the dam. Brazil’s environmental law covers companies that are directly or indirectly responsible for environmental damage. The judge found that BHP helped control Samarco and manage its mining waste, so it had to pay for the damage whether or not it had been careless.
⚠️ BHP had also been careless. Under Brazil’s civil law, anyone whose careless act or failure to act causes harm must pay for it. BHP was responsible for assessing the dam’s risks, and by August 2014 it knew or should have known that the dam was becoming unstable. Continuing to raise it helped cause the collapse.
The court has not yet decided how much each claimant should receive. A second trial, due to begin in April 2027, will work out how much compensation is owed. Those preparations are now tangled in a dispute over who should run the claimants’ case.
Why did the committee want new lawyers?
After the judgment, Pogust Goodhead hired two senior lawyers to lead the compensation stage, but both left within months. In June 2026, it brought in Quinn Emanuel, a major US litigation firm, to help run the claim.
The committee raised concerns about Pogust Goodhead’s management, staffing and transparency. It also reportedly questioned Gramercy’s role in appointing Quinn Emanuel, although Gramercy denies controlling the case.
On 21 August, the committee formally warned Pogust Goodhead and gave it a chance to respond. One week later, it voted to replace the firm with BGI. Because the discussions were private, its full reasons are unknown.
Could the committee actually replace Pogust Goodhead?
The vote left two questions:
🗳️ What does the contract allow? The LMA created the committee, so it only has the powers the agreement gives it. BGI says these include replacing Pogust Goodhead for most claimants. Pogust Goodhead disagrees. Because the LMA is private, we can’t tell who is right.
📄 What does the court record say? Under Part 42 of the Civil Procedure Rules, Pogust Goodhead remains formally named as the claimants’ law firm until a notice of change is filed and served, or an order that it has ceased to act is served. That does not prove every claimant still wants it to act.
Pogust Goodhead has now asked the High Court to rule that the committee had no power to sack it. Until a judge decides, both firms say they represent most claimants.
How can you use this in your applications?
Here are some ways you can use the insights from this story in your law firm applications.
Insight | How to use it in your applications |
|---|---|
Funding agreements can turn legal rights into valuable claims | Litigation is expensive. Under CCFAs and DBAs, some or all of the firm’s fees depend on the claim’s success.
By shifting some financial risk away from claimants, these agreements can make group claims possible where individuals couldn’t afford to litigate against a well-resourced corporate defendant alone. They also make the claim itself an investment – a funder like Gramercy puts money in because it expects a share of whatever is recovered.
If an interviewer asks why you’re interested in disputes or group litigation, explain that the practice involves more than arguing cases. You can discuss your interest in how lawyers structure fees, funding and group arrangements to make claims financially viable, widen access to justice, manage litigation involving thousands of clients and give funders a return. |
A company’s home can bring an overseas dispute to England | The Mariana disaster happened in Brazil, but one of BHP’s parent companies was based in England, so the claimants could sue it here. The English court ran the case under English procedure while using Brazilian law to decide whether BHP was liable. Where a case is heard and which law decides it can be two different things.
When applying to a firm with a strong international litigation practice, you can discuss Mariana and link it to your interests.
The case required lawyers to bring Brazilian claims before an English court, working with foreign-law experts to understand Brazilian law and navigate English procedure.
Explain that you’re attracted to the challenge of coordinating lawyers and evidence across jurisdictions, understanding how different legal systems interact and resolving procedural questions that can determine whether a claim can be heard at all. |
IN OTHER NEWS 🗞
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⚡ The UK competition regulator is investigating E.ON's takeover of Ovo Energy. The deal would combine E.ON's 5.6 million customers with Ovo's 4 million, nearly 10 million UK customers in total. The Competition and Markets Authority has opened a phase one inquiry to decide whether the merger would substantially reduce competition in the energy market.
⚖️ A lawyer has been struck off after using fake AI-generated cases in his defence. Abhishek Kumar, a registered foreign lawyer, was before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over a conviction for employing someone with no right to work. His written defence cited cases and quotes that did not support his arguments. His reply admitting he used AI was itself AI-drafted, with more errors.
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