(Reuters) -Australia’s BHP on Friday reached a deal with Brazilian miner Vale to split equally the cost of any damages related to proceedings in Britain over a 2015 dam collapse that killed 19 people , while denying liability for related claims.
BHP Group (UK) Ltd and its parent BHP are defendants to a group action claim in the English High Court, brought by more than 600,000 claimants seeking damages for the Fundão Dam failure in 2015.
BHP and Vale will each pay 50% of any amount potentially payable to the claimants in the UK proceedings, the Netherlands proceedings, and others in Brazil covered in the agreement, the company said on Friday.
It reinforces the framework agreement signed in 2016 for BHP Brasil and Vale to each contribute 50% to the funding of the Renova Foundation, which was set up to ensure full and fair remediation for the damages caused by the dam collapse.
“BHP believes the English Proceedings are unnecessary because they duplicate matters already covered by the existing and ongoing work of the Renova Foundation and legal proceedings in Brazil,” the company said.
BHP will continue to defend the UK proceedings and does not consider that it is liable to the related claimants, it added.
More than 720,000 Brazilians are suing the two companies over the collapse of the dam, which was owned and operated by their Samarco joint venture.
In March, a new claim was filed against Vale and the Dutch subsidiary of Samarco in the Netherlands in which BHP is not a defendant, BHP said.
Since the UK proceedings were not brought against Vale, BHP had filed for a contribution claim against Vale in December 2022, which has now been withdrawn due to the new agreement.
“The effect of the agreement is that should BHP ultimately be found to have any liability to the claimants in the UK claims, or should Vale ultimately be found to have any liability to the claimants in the Netherlands, such liability would be shared equally between BHP and Vale,” Vale said in a separate statement.
($1 = 0.7714 pounds)
(Reporting by Roushni Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Sriraj Kalluvila and David Evans)
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