Monica dos Santos, Brazil’s very own Mr Bates, is leading hundreds of thousands of people in the largest group claim in legal history.

Her journey to the doors of London’s High Court started some nine years ago when a dam belonging to the world’s largest mining company collapsed, engulfing her home in toxic mud.

Ms Santos, who retrained as lawyer to take on Anglo-Australian company BHP, joint owner of the Fundao tailings dam, which collapsed in November 2015, is helping 620,000 claimants seeking £36 billion damages.

“My life as I knew it ended that day. I lost everything – my house, my dreams, my friends. Our lives have been suspended since. It is a never-ending fight,” said Ms Santos. 

She believes she would be dead if she hadn’t gone to work that day. 

After engulfing her house and the entire village of Bento Rodrigues in south-eastern Brazil, the tailings – the toxic by-product of iron ore mining – entered the River Doce. 

From there, it weaved a deadly path across the country, sometimes in 10m waves, before spilling out into the Atlantic, 650km away. 

It directly killed 19 people, destroyed hundreds of homes and unleashed around 50 cubic metres of poisonous sludge over everything in its wake.