[2018] EWHC 3506 (QB) Kalma v African Minerals et al was held by the High Court on 19 December 2018. It essentially entails vicarious liability of UK-incorpored companies (jurisdiction firmly settled therefore) for human rights abuses committed by Sierra Leone police (SLP), who ensured security at the defendants’ mine. All claims were held to have failed. The judgment is lengthy and very factual, please refer to same.
Matrix have brief analysis here, critical reception of the judgment is inter alia here. The case does not raise the kind of jurisdictional or applicable law issues which trigger interest of this blog (such as yesterday’s post on Nevsun Resources). Nevertheless discussion of the factual involvement of the companies with SLP activities, required to establish vicarious liability, has echoes of the discussion on the level of oversight required for mother companies to be held liable for subsidiaries’ actions (such as e.g, in Apartheid or in various CSR cases making their way through UK courts).
Of additional note:
- Turner J’s discussion at 61 ff headed ‘keeping things in proportion’: the difficulty of a judge;s task, particularly at 63: ‘I make no complaint about the volume of written material which has been provided for my assistance. I have read all of it carefully. Both sides have been extremely well served by the industry and thoroughness of their respective legal teams. Inevitably, however, and for the sake of proportionality, I have had to leave a very considerable number of these points on the cutting room floor. This does not mean that I have failed to consider them or that I have discarded them as being entirely redundant but merely that the inclusion of their analysis or resolution in an already lengthy judgment would not have a material impact on the determination of the central issues.’ Less can be more.
- At 84: irrelevance of CSR discussions: ‘Both sides were very enthusiastic about the idea of setting the parameters of their evidence and submissions to cover broad issues concerning the general level of social responsibility displayed by the defendant – upon which topic they predictably entertained very different views. This, however, I have not permitted. The consequences of the exploration of such issues would have been entirely disproportionate, in terms both of time and costs, to the limited value of resolving them. For the same reason, I do not propose to adjudicate upon the rights and wrongs of the community and employment disputes which lay behind the incidents to which they gave rise.’
Geert.
(Handbook of) European Private International Law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 8, Heading 8.3.