Recently, a landmark United Kingdom case has made it clear that U.K.-based parent companies may be found liable for human rights violations committed by their foreign subsidiaries. Plaintiffs all over the world are filing lawsuits seeking to hold parent companies responsible for the extraterritorial conduct of their subsidiaries. The U.K. courts have determined that such lawsuits may be filed in the U.K. courts against U.K. parent companies. Cases on this issue are pending in United States and Canadian courts. The outcome of these cases have high-stakes consequences, which companies and their in-house counsel must begin to anticipate—they could open the door to an increasing number of lawsuits filed against companies for alleged failure to comply with human rights standards at all levels of the corporate structure.

In a landmark judgment, which the Oxford University Press named one of their “top 10 developments in international law in 2017,” (Merel Alstein, Top Ten Development in International Law in 2017, OUPblob Oxford University Press, Jan. 2018), a United Kingdom Court of Appeals permitted 1,826 Zambian villagers to bring a claim in the English courts against U.K.-based Vedanta Resources Plc (Vedanta) and its Zambian subsidiary, Konkola Copper Mines Plc (KCM). The court in Lungowe and Ors. v Vedanta Resources and Konkola Copper Mines, further decided that Vedanta could be held responsible for KCM’s alleged human rights abuses. The affected parties claimed negligence, and alleged that waste discharged from the Nchanga copper mine, which was owned and operated by KCM, had polluted the local waterways, causing personal injury to the local residents along with damage to property and loss of income. The claims also related to breaches of applicable Zambian environmental laws.