Corporate Accountability and Global Supply Chains: Lessons from Litigation in the English Courts

Speaker: Dr Ekaterina Aristova, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford

Join us in person or via Zoom: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/84585309341

There is a growing trend in Western jurisdictions, where the headquarters of transnational corporations are typically located, toward civil claims alleging direct liability of parent companies for harm caused by their overseas operations. These cases are particularly prominent in common law jurisdictions, such as the UK, where litigators have creatively relied on the duty of care under tort law.

The UK Supreme Court has recently clarified the scope of parent company liability in Lungowe v Vedanta and Okpabi v Shell, expanding the concept of parental oversight beyond strict control and opening the door to potential supply chain liability. Since then, novel claims addressing modern slavery within the global supply chains of British multinationals have emerged in the English courts, as seen in cases such as Josiya v British American Tobacco and Limbu v Dyson Technology Ltd.

This talk will trace these legal developments and assess the broader implications of this emerging case law for corporate accountability and transnational litigation

About the Speaker: Dr Ekaterina Aristova is a Research Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (Faculty of Law, University of Oxford) and an Academic Fellow at the Honourable Society of Middle Temple in London. Her research interests are in the field of business and human rights, with a particular focus on strategic human rights and environmental litigation. Ekaterina examines how conventional private law doctrines evolve in response to global challenges and are used creatively in different jurisdictions to foster human rights and environmental accountability. Ekaterina is an author of ‘Tort Litigation against Transnational Corporations in the English Courts: The Challenge of Jurisdiction’ (OUP 2024), a revised manuscript of a PhD thesis completed at the University of Cambridge. Ekaterina is also a co-editor of ‘Civil Remedies and Human Rights in Flux’ (Hart Publishing 2022); ‘Civil Liability for Human Rights Violations: A Handbook for Practitioners’ (Bonavero Institute of Human Rights 2022) and ‘Cambridge Handbook on Business and Human Rights Litigation’ (forthcoming CUP 2026). In 2022, Ekaterina was awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to complete a project on climate change litigation against corporations.

Dr Aristova's Biography and Publications