Rinehart loses court battle
Gina Rinehart loses major court battle. Ian Verrender reports.
THE children of the late minerals prospector Peter Wright have won a nine-year court battle against the family company of Mr Wright's late partner, Lang Hancock, over half of one of Australia's richest undeveloped iron ore deposits.
The suit, launched in March 2001, pitted Australia's two wealthiest women against each other.
Mr Hancock's only child, Gina Rinehart, and Mr Wright's daughter, Angela Bennett, have parlayed their inheritances into fortunes of $3.5 billion and $800 million respectively, according to BRW magazine's Rich 200.
Partnership had the Wright stuff
The West Australian Supreme Court has ruled that Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd should obey the terms of a 1984 asset-sharing agreement in favour of Wright Prospecting Pty Ltd.
Mrs Rinehart is the major shareholder in Hancock Prospecting and Wright Prospecting is 99 per cent owned by Mrs Bennett and her brother, Michael Wright. (They bought out Peter Wright's only other child, Julian Wright, in 1987.)
The order will force Mrs Rinehart to give up 25 per cent of the high-grade Rhodes Ridge tenements in the Pilbara, over which her father and Peter Wright gained control in 1967.
Five years later, they sold half the deposit to an American mining company which subsequently sold its stake to Rio Tinto. Mr Hancock and Mr Wright retained 25 per cent each.
On Friday, Justice Michael Murray upheld Wright Prospecting's right to exercise a 1984 option over Hancock Prospecting's 25 per cent interest in Rhodes Ridge.
Wright Prospecting was entitled to an order that Hancock Prospecting ''take all necessary steps and execute all necessary documents to transfer the benefit of the Rhodes Ridge interest'' to Wright Prospecting, the judge said.
In a 185-page judgment, Justice Murray ruled that a 1984 partnership agreement signed by Lang Hancock and Peter Wright remained in force.
The agreement covered many mining interests, but the court case related only to the large Rhodes Ridge tenements near the town of Newman, which hold at least 2 billion tonnes of high-grade iron ore.
Rhodes Ridge is under separate legal challenge by mining junior Cazaly Resources, which claims that under Western Australia's ''use it or lose it'' minerals regime, the Rio-led joint venture has allowed its rights to lapse by failing to develop the project under an agreement signed with the state government in 1972.
The Cazaly dispute was referred to the WA Court of Appeal last month.
