The Parliamentary
Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), recently has decided to inquire into business and human rights; the way in which businesses can affect human rights both positively and negatively; how business activities engage the relative responsibilities of the UK Government and individual businesses; and whether the existing UK regulatory, legal and voluntary framework provides adequate guidance and clarity to business as well as adequate protection to individual rights.
Richard Meeran, a partner in the international claims team at leading human rights and personal injury law firm Leigh Day & Co, was invited to give evidence to the committee together with representatives of Amnesty International, Action Aid and the Corporate Responsibility Coalition. Richard’s work often involves bringing claims on behalf of people who have been injured through the actions of British companies operating overseas. His cases include the successful claims he made against Cape plc on behalf of South African miners who contracted asbestos-related diseases after working for Cape’s subsidiary in South Africa. He also bought a successful claim against Thor Chemicals who also operated in South Africa.
Richard said to the JCHR that due to the obstacle of “corporate veil”, it is difficult to make a multinational parent company legally responsible for the wrongdoing of its overseas subsidiary company. Consequently his cases have utilised a novel approach, which focuses on the direct wrongdoing of the parent company itself, for example in the design of technology that has resulted in harm overseas, or negligent supervision of overseas operations by the parent company. He also said how the demise of legal aid and worry about legal costs had made running these cases much riskier for law firms who do take them on. The lack of class action legislation in the UK is another barrier to justice for overseas claimants who have been injured by UK companies. The committee discussed possible ways around these problems including the use of protective costs orders.
The corrected transcript of evidence will be added to this website once it is available as HC 599-ii. You can watch the meeting
here.
For more information please contact
Richard Meeran on 020 7650 1200.
Information was correct at time of publishing. See terms and conditions for further details.