Two litigation funders are backing rival law firms in a fight for control of a £36 billion ($48.8 billion) suit over one of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters.
Law firm Pogust Goodhead brought the UK case against BHP Group Ltd and Vale SA on behalf of more than 600,000 Brazilians affected by the 2015 Fundão dam collapse. With the miners found liable in November, the case’s two main financial backers are now at odds over how to maximize the payout — and which lawyers should lead the next phase.
North Wall Capital and Gramercy Funds Management are locked in a behind-the-scenes tussle, backing rival legal teams vying for control of the litigation. At stake is a share of any eventual proceeds from the case.
Gramercy backs the duo of Pogust Goodhead and Quinn Emanuel to run the case, while North Wall is financing the rival team seeking to replace them, according to people familiar with the matter. The upheaval may also give the ousted Pogust Goodhead chief a route back into the litigation after he left the firm last year.
Representatives from Quinn Emanuel, Gramercy and North Wall declined to comment.
In 2023, Gramercy provided a loan that refinanced the €178 million ($207 million) of funding North Wall had provided to Pogust Goodhead, allowing North Wall to double its money, Bloomberg reported at the time. Gramercy has since invested hundreds of millions more to support the case.
The potential windfall demonstrates the allure of litigation finance — where backers get a cut of any winnings or shoulder the losses. The UK market has boomed in recent years, with proponents arguing that it gives claimants a better shot at taking on big firms with outsize resources. Critics point to the large share of any award taken by funders, arguing that it encourages frivolous lawsuits and discourages reasonable settlements.
In the latest twist of a messy situation, the client committee in the London dam lawsuit, which represents affected Brazilian communities, said last week that it had fired Pogust Goodhead as its legal representative. A claim the firm has pushed back against.
North Wall Capital are now behind a little known firm called Edward McCourt & Company, staffed by a number of ex-Pogust Goodhead partners and working closely with US firm Bailey Glasser International. A spokesperson for BGI did not respond to a request for comment.
“Pogust Goodhead’s position is clear: the client committee, a group of 17 members appointed by the previous management and whose identities are kept confidential, does not have the authority, acting on its own, to transfer the claims,” the law firm said in a statement to Bloomberg.
A spokesperson for the lawyers representing the client committee countered it had acted within its contractual powers. “The committee remains fully confident in the decision it took to protect the interests of the people it represents.”
The 2015 collapse of the dam operated by the joint venture called Samarco Mineração S.A killed 19 people in the Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo states. In 2024, the firms entered into a settlement worth $31.1 billion with Brazilian authorities in 2024. The accord did not cover the UK case and a Netherlands claim against Vale and Samarco entities.
BHP increased its estimate of Samarco-related costs by $575 million, taking its total provision for the disaster to about $5.2 billion, according to its Annual Report for 2026. It did not give a separate estimate of how much the UK case could cost the company.
About 240,000 people in the UK lawsuit have already received compensation in Brazil and that will reduce the size of the overall claim, according to BHP.
While Pogust Goodhead won the initial claim against BHP, behind the scenes there was disagreement between the law firm and Gramercy.
The investment fund was unhappy with key shareholder and director, Thomas Goodhead, the onetime face of the firm. Gramercy alleged Goodhead had abused his expense account and spent lavishly on hotels and private planes, according to a witness statement from Pogust Goodhead’s General Counsel Kam Lynn Wong filed in a London court last week.
Goodhead didn’t respond to requests for comment. Commenting on press reports about the accusations last year, Goodhead said that corporate hospitality and travel was in line with other large law firms, and that he was ousted in a boardroom coup.
In September 2025 Goodhead left the firm. The relationship between the client committee and Pogust Goodhead has not recovered since. Earlier this year, in order to help bring the claim Pogust Goodhead agreed to start working with Quinn Emanuel, something which the client committee was against, according to the witness statement.
Photograph: Property destroyed by flooding following the collapse of the Fundão dam in 2015; photo credit: Douglas Magno/AFP/Getty Images
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