06/05/2026
The Court of Appeal has today refused BHP’s application for permission to appeal the High Court’s landmark liability judgment in the Mariana disaster litigation.
BHP was seeking to overturn the decision from November 2025 in which the High Court found BHP responsible for the 2015 collapse of the Fundão tailings dam in Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil, concluding that, as a polluter, BHP acted with negligence, imprudence or lack of skill that led to the disaster.
The Court of Appeal’s refusal marks a further victory for the hundreds of thousands of Brazilian victims who have spent over ten years pursuing justice, and a major setback for BHP. The High Court’s decision remains in force, and there are no further ordinary routes for BHP to attempt to overturn the liability judgment.
Jonathan Wheeler, lead partner for the Mariana litigation at Pogust Goodhead, said: “The Court of Appeal has now joined the High Court in finding that BHP’s grounds of appeal have no real prospect of success - an emphatic and unambiguous outcome. BHP remains liable for the worst environmental disaster in Brazil’s history, and it will not be given another bite at the cherry.”
“Our clients have waited more than a decade for justice while BHP pursued every procedural avenue to avoid accountability; those avenues are now closed. We are focused on securing the compensation that hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have been owed for far too long.”
The parties will proceed to the Stage 2 trial, which will examine the categories of loss and the evidence required to assess and quantify damages. The trial evidence is to be heard from April 2027 to December 2027, with closing submissions listed for March 2028.
