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Johannesburg - Gold mining companies, past and present, have filed thousands of pages of court papers in their bid to stop the historic class action by former mineworkers suffering from the lung disease silicosis, reported City Press.
The mines are not only arguing against the class action on legal principles, but allege it would be virtually impossible for the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg to manage a case this “gargantuan”.
At this point, mines are only arguing against the certification of a class action, not the actual questions of liability and damages.
The class action aims to cover practically all gold miners since the 1950s, potentially resulting in billions of rands in claims against dozens of mining companies.
Most notable among the respondents are Anglo American SA [JSE:AGL], AngloGold Ashanti [JSE:ANG], Gold Fields [JSE:GFI] and Harmony [JSE:HAR].
The different companies are taking very different approaches, owing in part to their very different liabilities.
AngloGold Ashanti, for instance, has only existed in its own right since being divested by Anglo American in 1998 and faces far fewer claims than Anglo itself or Gold Fields, which ran the country’s largest mines near Carletonville for half a century.
Anglo said the scale of the class action envisaged “boggles the imagination”. In its papers, it estimates the “gargantuan litigation” would require more than 50 lawyers representing mines and mine workers in a case “no viable legal proceeding could ever accommodate”.
Gold Fields and others are arguing that the kinds of evidence they will argue would be on an individual basis, interrogating the minutiae of possible dust exposures and alleged instances of negligence for thousands of people spanning a 60-year period.
The mines are fundamentally fighting for the idea that there could be a collective case for collective damages.
Read the full story on City Press.
The mines are not only arguing against the class action on legal principles, but allege it would be virtually impossible for the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg to manage a case this “gargantuan”.
At this point, mines are only arguing against the certification of a class action, not the actual questions of liability and damages.
The class action aims to cover practically all gold miners since the 1950s, potentially resulting in billions of rands in claims against dozens of mining companies.
Most notable among the respondents are Anglo American SA [JSE:AGL], AngloGold Ashanti [JSE:ANG], Gold Fields [JSE:GFI] and Harmony [JSE:HAR].
The different companies are taking very different approaches, owing in part to their very different liabilities.
AngloGold Ashanti, for instance, has only existed in its own right since being divested by Anglo American in 1998 and faces far fewer claims than Anglo itself or Gold Fields, which ran the country’s largest mines near Carletonville for half a century.
Anglo said the scale of the class action envisaged “boggles the imagination”. In its papers, it estimates the “gargantuan litigation” would require more than 50 lawyers representing mines and mine workers in a case “no viable legal proceeding could ever accommodate”.
Gold Fields and others are arguing that the kinds of evidence they will argue would be on an individual basis, interrogating the minutiae of possible dust exposures and alleged instances of negligence for thousands of people spanning a 60-year period.
The mines are fundamentally fighting for the idea that there could be a collective case for collective damages.
Read the full story on City Press.
