The barrister who cast Britain’s biggest lawsuit into chaos

Louis GossSat, October 10, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC

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Thomas Goodhead was cut out of the litigation, but 400,000 victims followed him - Heathcliff O'Malley for The Telegraph

Thomas Goodhead’s 40th birthday party was an extravagant affair.

Hosted at the Wallace Collection, an art gallery in Mayfair, the black-tie gathering was held to honour the British barrister and the law firm he co-founded, Pogust Goodhead.

As guests sipped champagne and dined on fine food, the Oxford-educated lawyer had good reason to celebrate.

His law firm was at the time in control of the biggest lawsuit in British legal history, representing thousands of Brazilian victims in a £36bn class action lawsuit against two of the world’s largest mining companies.

Goodhead’s work on the case had propelled him into a fast-paced lifestyle involving regular trips between Britain and Brazil.

“I don’t do very well on my carbon footprint, I’m afraid, because I’m just commuting across the Atlantic, but I like to think it’s for a good cause,” he once said.

The case involved work on behalf of thousands of victims from one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

A burst dam near Mariana in southern Brazil had flooded local villages in toxic mud in 2015, killing 19 people.

The village of Bento Rodrigues, in south-eastern Brazil, covered in mud after a dam burst in 2015 - Christophe Simon/AFP via Getty Images

BHP and Vale have been held liable for the calamity, with hundreds of thousands of claimants now seeking compensation from the companies.

Goodhead and his firm were spearheading the claim for around 700,000 of the victims until it all unravelled last year.

The British barrister was booted out of his firm after a row with Gramercy Funds Management, the US hedge fund financing the claim.

It meant the barrister was cut out of the litigation. But now he is fighting back.

The High Court will shortly rule on who represents the majority of the claimants: Goodhead’s former firm (Pogust Goodhead) or his new law firm.

At stake are hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of fees.

Indigenous tribal chiefs from Brazil demonstrate outside the High Court in London in 2024 - Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Goodhead first heard about the Mariana disaster during a chance encounter with a Brazilian lawyer at a conference and soon became captivated by the idea it might be litigated in the High Court.

By chance, he met Harris Pogust, a high-profile American litigator, at a Super Bowl party in Hawaii shortly after.

It led to them launching Pogust Goodhead only a few months later, with the specific aim of launching the £36bn Mariana Dam claim.

“I don’t know if it was his idea, my idea, but we decided let’s just start a firm and see where we can take this thing, and it kind of exploded pretty much immediately,” Pogust said.

Thomas Goodhead’s law firm represented thousands of Brazilian victims in a £36bn class action lawsuit against two of the world’s largest mining companies - Good Look Events

The nascent firm grew rapidly, taking on a series of similar class action lawsuits, including the so-called “dieselgate” claim against carmakers.

But it was the Mariana claim which pushed the law firm into the stratosphere – and Goodhead into the firing line.

Like most class action lawsuits, the funding to pay for the case came from a hedge fund, in this case Gramercy.

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Goodhead and Gramercy came to loggerheads last year – leading to Goodhead leaving the firm he founded.

The circumstances of the departure are disputed.

Goodhead says Gramercy wanted to settle the case for a smaller sum than the victims deserved, while Gramercy has claimed he was misspending millions worth of legal funds.

Goodhead has denied these misspending allegations, saying the outgoings were part of the ordinary business of the law firm or paid for by himself with no client money involved.

Thomas Goodhead is now working with most of the claimants at a different law firm - Heathcliff O'Malley for The Telegraph

Pogust – Goodhead’s former partner – has defended the spending, saying any top executive in a large law firm would have similarly sizeable expenses.

“It’s b------t. You look at any managing partner of any firm in the US that’s 600 people and you look at what they’re saying, they’re going first class, staying in five-star hotels. When you travel 200 days a year, you’re entitled to do that. You give up your life for the clients. So don’t expect him to sit in the toilet,” Pogust said.

The row with Gramercy might have ended the career of most high-flying lawyers, but behind the scenes Goodhead was working to regain the centre stage.

Last month, Goodhead revealed he was working with a new law firm, Bailey Glasser International (BGI), which now claims to be representing most of the victims.

At the start of September, Bailey Glasser said 400,000 claimants had switched to work with it, rather than Pogust Goodhead, after a committee of victims voted to transfer the case.

The committee claims Pogust Goodhead is now effectively owned and controlled by Gramercy and that its interests fundamentally clash with those of its clients because the hedge fund wants to settle the case.

A spokesman for Pogust Goodhead said the claim was incorrect and the law firm acts “independently and in the best interests of its clients”.

“Gramercy is a funder of the firm, but it does not direct or control the conduct of the Mariana litigation,” it said.

“The suggestion that [Pogust Goodhead] is seeking to bring the litigation to an end prematurely is also inconsistent with what the firm is actually doing.”

Further litigation has followed, with Pogust Goodhead suing the committee, claiming they lacked the authority to switch firms.

Pogust also has asked for his surname to be taken out of its name and sent a cease-and-desist letter to his former firm, requesting the change of name. He says the legal clash risks damaging his own reputation as a lawyer.

“These people lost everything in this disaster – their houses, their family members, their possessions, their pets, everything. And the last thing they need is the people they think they trust the most to sue them,” Pogust said.

Pogust Goodhead has begun changing its name to PGMBM. A spokesman for the law firm said: “Neither of the former founders has any role in the firm today, and we believe the name should reflect the firm as it exists now.”

The firm added: “Should the court ultimately recognise the client committee’s authority to transfer representation of the wider claimant group, PGMBM will pursue all appropriate legal remedies to protect its rights.

“The rights and obligations arising from almost eight years of legal work cannot simply be disregarded, irrespective of which firm ultimately represents the claimants.”

It will now be for the High Court to decide who should run the biggest case in the history of Britain’s courts.

BGI was contacted for comment.

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Source: “AOL Money”