Corporate Liability for Toxic Torts Abroad: Vedanta v Lungowe in the Supreme Court

Abstract

Multinational corporate groups pose a challenge to traditional methods of legal control, particularly when corporations domiciled in wealthy western countries exploit, through foreign-domiciled subsidiaries, the resources and 'weak governance' of the developing world. In holding England as the proper place in which to bring a claim against both a UK-domiciled company and its Zambian subsidiary, for environmental damage abroad, the Supreme Court has allegedly 'opened the door' to similar future actions. However, in the absence of robust and mandatory due diligence requirements, parent companies may simply retreat from comprehensively reporting on group-wide systems of management and control. A desire to avoid future 'voluntary assumptions of responsibility' may be the undoing of post-Vedanta optimism.

Keywords: jurisdiction, corporate groups, parent company duty of care, environmental damage, environmental management systems