The state’s highest court has criticised the dragged timeline in the ongoing proceedings between Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy and CITIC, with a trial listed for 2025.
The state’s highest court has criticised the dragged timeline in the ongoing proceedings between Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy and CITIC Pacific Mining, with a trial listed for 2025.
Supreme Court of Western Australia Justice Michael Lundberg yesterday delivered his decision on having the legal matters between the parties be dealt with concurrently.
In his judgment, Justice Lundberg ordered one of the legal actions to be listed for trial in April 2025.
Mineralogy claimed there should be consecutive primary trials over the four active legal actions, with the most recent one lodged in December to be heard first.
However, CITIC claimed the matter titled 2023 MCP Proceeding was urgent because it involved the constrained operations at Sino Iron mine project, to which Mineralogy holds the tenement for.
In 2023 MCP Proceeding, CITIC sought court orders to force Mineralogy to agree to a set of interim proposals that would allow mining operations to continue.
CITIC claimed there was an urgency with the proceeding, with constrained operations at Sino Iron impacting the multi-billion dollar magnetite project, the employment of thousands of Western Australians, and millions of dollars in royalties for the state, according to the judgment.
Justice Lundberg said the 2023 MCP Proceeding was the only action of the several other matters that required a swift resolution.
“The disputes between these protagonists have consumed the resources of this Court and the Court of Appeal over the course of the last decade, to a significant extent,” he said in his judgment.
“The claims advanced by the various parties are complex.
“The amounts claimed are enormous, and the non-monetary relief sought in one of the actions is said to be of great significance for the orderly and profitable continuation of the principal iron ore mine.”
In his judgment, Justice Lundberg said the application to separate the legal matters was troubling.
“I say that because the question whether quantum and liability issues in these actions should be split has already occupied the attention of the court on two prior occasions,” he said.
“Orders were made by [Justice] Kenneth Martin on 14 September 2020 to split the quantum issues, so that they would be tried separately.
“Then, some years later, the CITIC Parties sought to unify the issues in the action and in effect undo the separate trial orders previously made, a position to which the Mineralogy parties ultimately consented.
“Now, the Mineralogy parties seek orders to fragment the cases, again.
"This cycle of interlocutory applications, which Mr Dharmananda SC likened to a Nietzschean loop of endless repetition and recurrence, is highly unsatisfactory.”
Justice Lundberg said he expected the proceedings would be ready for trial by the second half of 2024.
“That timetable has slipped, although no sworn explanation for that slippage has been forthcoming from the Mineralogy Parties, who were, as I have said, actively seeking an early trial of the actions,” he said.
“So far as I can assess it, the previously expressed desire on the part of the Mineralogy Parties to bring these matters to trial had begun to evaporate in early 2024.
“In fact, by the time the matter was heard for directions on 26 March 2024, the potential for a trial in the latter half of 2024 had all but been extinguished.
“It is regrettable that the Court's expectation that these two actions would be ready for trial by now has not been realised.
“In the course of my reasons in rejecting the challenge, I noted that I was the seventh judge to review the allegations but would probably 'not be the last'.”
