Sixteen years after a bitter billion-dollar commercial conflict between Australia’s most powerful mining dynasties first erupted, legal representatives for the involved parties have headed back to a Western Australian court to resolve one last burning question: who will foot the staggering $100 million legal bill accumulated over more than a decade of litigation?
The dispute, which first kicked off in 2010, pits Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd (HPPL) against Wright Prospecting Pty Ltd (WPPL), another firm controlled by prominent mining heirs. The core of the conflict centered on contested rights to lucrative iron ore royalties and critical mining assets tied to the Hope Downs operation in Western Australia’s resource-rich Pilbara region. After years of pre-trial wrangling, the high-stakes case finally reached the WA Supreme Court for a full 53-day trial in 2023, with daily legal fees estimated at a jaw-dropping $250,000 – a rate that pushed total projected costs across the entire 16-year dispute to roughly $100 million, according to local media reports.
Last month, Justice Jennifer Smith delivered her long-awaited landmark ruling more than two years after the close of trial proceedings. The decision handed a major partial victory to WPPL, ordering HPPL to share hundreds of millions of dollars in iron ore royalties with the rival firm. DFD Rhodes, a third entity linked to the Rhodes mining family, also secured partial success in its claim for a share of royalties. However, Rinehart retained full control over the billion-dollar mining licences for the East Angelas site, after the court dismissed competing claims over that site from WPPL and from Rinehart’s own children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart.
With the core ownership and royalty questions settled, the court has now turned to the unresolved issue of cost allocation. Arguments put forward by all sides reveal deep divisions over who should bear responsibility for the massive legal expenses.
WPPL’s legal team is pushing for HPPL to cover 75% of its total costs, arguing that WPPL won the majority of its core claims. But HPPL’s senior counsel Charles Colquhoun SC pushed back, noting that his client retained ownership of the highest-value asset in the entire dispute – the East Angelas tenements. “It can’t be denied that we won on the propriety claim and there needs to be some victory on that issue,” Colquhoun told the court. “It was the most important issue in the proceedings, certainly the most valuable issue in the proceedings.”
The biggest point of contention now surrounds the failed claims brought by John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart, who were seeking a portion of their grandfather Lang Hancock’s mining legacy. DFD Rhodes has argued the pair should be held responsible for 15% of total costs, while WPPL is pushing for an even higher 20% allocation, arguing that the siblings’ involvement unnecessarily lengthened the proceedings and drained significant court and legal resources.
Julie Taylor SC, representing WPPL, told the court that the siblings’ defense alone spanned 250 pages, and their closing submissions ran to 749 pages. “John and Bianca took 14 days of the hearing time for their submissions alone, all the parties had to respond to that,” she said. “A rough estimate of 20 per cent would be fair.” For their part, the siblings have argued that each party should simply absorb its own legal costs after their unsuccessful claim.
The WA Supreme Court is now reviewing all submissions from the multiple involved parties before issuing a final ruling on cost allocation, closing the book on one of Australia’s longest-running and most expensive commercial mining disputes.