Lawsuits accused miner of negligence for its role in human rights abuses at its Fenix nickel mine in Guatemala
Terms of the settlement announced on Monday were not disclosed, but lawyers said the plaintiffs each received compensation.
Between 2007 and 2009, dozens of personnel from the Fenix nickel mine in eastern Guatemala, along with police and military, allegedly violently evicted the Indigenous Mayan community of Lote Ocho from their homes, according to allegations in the suit.
In the clash, 11 Mayan Q’eqchi’ women say they were allegedly sexually assaulted, community leader Adolfo Ich Cháman was assaulted with a machete, shot and killed, and another community member, Germán Chub Choc, was shot and left paralyzed.
Hudbay spent more than a decade fighting the case and framed the settlement as a positive because it concludes the litigation without having to admit liability.
“The terms agreed with the plaintiffs confirm the settlement is without admission of liability and the parties continue to have fundamentally differing views on the facts,” the company said in a press release.
Peter Kukielski, chief executive of Hudbay, said the settlement was a recognition of “the difficult economic and social circumstances of the plaintiffs.”
Hudbay purchased the mine in 2008 for $451 million and inherited liability at that time for the actions of the previous owners, but also faced allegations related to its own personnel.
Murray Klippenstein at Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, said his clients hope that their “tenacity and ordeal” will help protect other similarly situated people.
“The plaintiffs pursued justice in Ontario against a transnational Canadian corporation and ultimately obtained a fair and reasonable settlement. We think that corporate executives and investors alike may want to take note,” he said in a statement.
“Nothing can bring my husband back or undo the anguish felt by me, my family and the other plaintiffs, but I am glad that some measure of justice has been achieved,” she said in a statement.
The lawsuit against Hudbay helped usher in a new era of legal accountability since it was one of the first to try to hold a Canadian mining company liable for human rights abuses that occur abroad. Two other lawsuits that employed a similar legal theory were filed against other mining companies afterwards, both of which were settled years ago.
Joe Fiorante at Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman LLP, who represented the plaintiffs in that case, said at the time that the claims were “part of an emerging legal framework” seeking to reconceptualize how mining companies can be held liable for actions that take place in other countries.
“I think the important part is the precedent it set in terms of opening up the Canadian court system for foreign plaintiffs to bring cases of this nature forward,” he said.
In 2022, Fiorante and Cory Wanless, of Waddell Phillips PC and co-counsel in the case against Hudbay, filed a lawsuit in Ontario against Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. related to alleged human rights abuses at its mine in Tanzania.
Hudbay spent more than a decade in litigation, but sold the mine in 2011 for $170 million to Solway Investment Group Ltd., a Swiss mining and metals company.
In 2013, a judge in Ontario ruled Hudbay could be held liable for events that occurred in Guatemala. During the next decade, the plaintiffs’ lawyers obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents related to the expulsions of their clients from the Fenix nickel mine lands.
Although his pleas carried no direct legal impact in Canadian courts, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case here said the pleas connected up with the events at issue in their lawsuit.
“This pulls the rug out from Hudbay’s main denial right now,” Klippenstein said at the time, adding that Hudbay had denied that Padilla was connected to the violence in their case.
Three years later, the case has settled.
“It is true that I cannot really say that I am happy, because my personal and family life have been badly damaged forever by what happened,” Germán Choc Chub, who was left paralyzed, said in a statement. “But I can say that I am proud that we have stood up for ourselves, fought back, and achieved this positive result.”