Solução de conflitos em ambientes dominados por litigantes habituais e os acordos individuais via Defensoria Pública em Brumadinho

Abstract

Economic, cultural, technical and legal disparities that mark the relationship between repeat and one shotter players, intensified by new technologies, compromise the minimum balance of forces expected to enable dialogue and the just overcoming of the dispute through self-composition. This is exactly the situation faced by the Brumadinho’s residents after the environmental disaster caused by Vale S/A. Many of them signed individual agreements with the company through the Minas Gerais Public Defender's Office, to be immediately compensated for the suffered damage. Originally, the environmental disaster in Brumadinho/MG emulated a previous tragedy in Mariana/MG, whose consequences, however, were diverse. The two situations are compared and analyzed in particular whether those individual agreements are appropriate, even in the face of imbalance between the parties or whether the judicial route would be preferable. The pros and cons of litigation, governed by the logic of the cooperative process, and the commitment term created by DPMG, are weighted to clarify the decision-making in the case of Brumadinho and similar others - which, in the view of this work, can only be bequeathed to the public service’s addressee, but requires informed consent and minimal symmetry between the signatories.