Litigation funding is a powerful tool to redress the balance between powerful defendants with vast wealth and resources at their disposal, and claimants who lack the financial resources to fight back. This contrast is often most sharply seen in cases where indigenous communities are fighting for justice against government entities or corporations that have harmed them, who without third-party funding, would be unable to gain access to the legal system.
An LFJ Conversation with Michael Kelley, Partner, Parker Poe
Litigation funding is a powerful tool to redress the balance between powerful defendants with vast wealth and resources at their disposal, and claimants who lack the financial resources to fight back. This contrast is often most sharply seen in cases where indigenous communities are fighting for justice against government entities or corporations that have harmed them, who without third-party funding, would be unable to gain access to the legal system.
In a new effort to bring justice on behalf of indigenous communities, Daniel Cavalcante, a lawyer from Brazil, is calling on law firms and litigation funders to support lawsuits against large international corporations harming the people and the environment of the Amazon. In a video published to his YouTube channel, Cavalcante describes how indigenous peoples in the region “suffer the most diverse types of violence, prejudice and oppression”.
Cavalcante states that this oppression and harm is being conducted both by foreign companies and by state governments, who have perpetrated “a true ethnic-cultural genocide that decimated their habits, customs and traditions”.
