Businessman Travers Duncan has launched legal action in the High Court to challenge the NSW government’s new laws to cancel rights to the coal ­tenement underneath former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid ’s farm in the Bylong Valley.

Mr Duncan’s action, lodged in Sydney by his lawyers Yeldham Price O’Brien Lusk on Friday, sets the scene for a major battle over limitations to states’ rights when the action is heard, probably by the end of the year.