Judge Suspends Lawsuit Against Firms Involved in 2015 Brazilian Mining Disaster
March 16 2017 - 9:06PM
Dow Jones News
By Paul Kiernan
RIO DE JANEIRO -- A Brazilian judge suspended a nearly $50
billion lawsuit against mining firms responsible for the 2015
Samarco disaster Thursday, as negotiations between the companies
and authorities moved forward.
The decision came as part of a ruling in which federal judge
Mário de Paula Franco Júnior approved a road map toward a final
agreement between prosecutors and mining companies Vale SA, BHP
Billiton Ltd. and their joint-venture Samarco Mineração SA.
Federal prosecutors, regulatory agencies and the three companies
have been locked in fierce litigation since Samarco's Fundão
tailings dam collapsed on Nov. 5, 2015, releasing an avalanche of
mine waste. The incident is widely considered Brazil's worst-ever
environmental catastrophe and the largest failure of a mining
dam.
Due to its scale -- the disaster killed 19 people, wiped out
villages below the dam and polluted hundreds of miles of rivers --
authorities have struggled to come up with a definitive tally of
the damage.
To that end, the partial agreement ratified Thursday called for
three different groups of experts -- two appointed by the court,
one by the companies -- to come up with studies that would assess
the social, economic and environmental impacts of the disaster and
evaluate the recovery programs under way.
Also as part of Thursday's ruling, Judge Franco ordered Samarco
and its parent companies to put up guarantees worth 2.2 billion
Brazilian reais ($705 million).
In a statement, Vale expressed support for the decision, saying
it "recognizes the complexity and importance of reaching a
consensual solution to implement the necessary measures to
remediate all the impacts" of the dam failure.
Write to Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 16, 2017 20:51 ET (00:51 GMT)
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