The founder of collective action firm Pogust Goodhead’s claim on a podcast that he wanted to be a mining giant’s ‘absolute worst nightmare’ was today raised in contempt proceedings.
PG’s chief executive Tom Goodhead had appeared on legal podcast Non-Billable on 29 April, where he accused mining giant BHP Group of conducting 'lawfare', targeting his firm and its clients. The firm has brought a group action on behalf of 620,000 Brazilian claimants over the 2015 Mariana dam disaster in southeastern Brazil.
Some claimants - Brazilian municipalities - filed for contempt against BHP in October, alleging the company had secretly agreed with a Brazilian mining industry lobby group to fund a challenge in the Brazilian Supreme Court with the intention of forcing the London claim to be withdrawn. BHP, represented by magic circle firm Slaughter and May, says those claimants as well as Pogust Goodhead are not ‘appropriate guardians of any public interest’ and cannot bring a claim action.
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In an application to strike out the contempt claim today, BHP referred to Goodhead’s podcast, where he said BHP’s actions made him ‘angry’.
‘I know as a barrister, as a solicitor, you’re meant to emotionally detach yourself from the case, but you can’t do it in a case like this’, Goodhead had said. ‘You have to care about the case that you’re doing and it becomes basically a cause’.
Goodhead pointed out his firm's financial stake in the litigation - stating it had $1billion in debts - and said: ‘I basically want to be these companies’ absolute worst nightmare’.
At a hearing in the Rolls Building, counsel for BHP, Andrew Scott KC, argued: ‘This sort of stuff may well be par for the course, may well be part of the usual rough and tumble that one sees in commercial litigation between well resourced parties. But what it is not is the conduct that the court needs for a dispassionate prosecutor in the public interest.’
Fiona Horlick KC, for the claimants, submitted: ‘None of their complaints as against the [claimants] (and now, quite remarkably, PG) point to any irregularity in the manner in which proceedings have in fact been brought’.
Judgment was reserved.
