By Aja Styles
Supreme Court Justice Rene Le Miere has passed the baton to Justice Jennifer Smith in a decades-long multibillion-dollar mining dispute between two of Western Australia’s wealthiest families, just as its much-anticipated trial is under threat of being derailed.
Hancock Prospecting, owned by Australia’s wealthiest magnate Gina Rinehart, and Wright Prospecting, belonging to WA billionaire heiress Angela Bennett and her two nieces, are due to go to trial over Lang Hancock’s iron ore legacy, Hope Downs mines, in April 2022.
War of the Rineharts: Bianca Rinehart is challenging her mother Gina to Hancock Prospecting’s Pilbara assets.Credit: Fairfax Media
Lang and business partner Peter Wright etched out much of the Pilbara’s iron ore mining landscape in the 1960s and 70s and their tenements and partnership deals have been the subject of litigation between their warring children, and even between family members internally, ever since.
In July, Justice Le Miere delivered three significant decisions, two of which left open a door to Mrs Rinehart’s children – Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock – in their claim of being unfairly prohibited from their rightful inheritance to own Hope Downs via a family trust.
Justice Le Miere awarded Bianca, as trustee, court documents over a historical case involving her late grandfather Lang and his estate, which Mrs Rinehart’s lawyer earlier claimed: “If those claims [to the documents] succeed, the value of HPPL and its shares will reduce dramatically.”
WAtoday is aware those documents have since been supplied by the court to John and Bianca.
Justice Le Miere also did not strike out John and Bianca’s arguments that Hope Downs exploration transactions between Wright Prospecting and Hancock Prospecting “were part of a dishonest and fraudulent design by Gina”.
He ruled “the children’s equitable interest in the Hope Downs tenements is not irrelevant, unnecessary or vexatious”, nor were their defences.
On Monday, the Supreme Court heard that Hancock Prospecting was seeking to challenge Justice Le Miere’s judgement in the Court of Appeal, which lawyer Christian Bova SC said would have “a material effect on all aspects” of the trial.
Mr Bova also indicated that any attempt at progressing the delivery of Hancock Prospecting documents to the younger Rineharts in late November “could all be wasted” in light of Hancock’s appeal.
Wright Prospecting lawyer Kristina Stern SC raised concerns in court on Monday that the appeal, if heard and not done expeditiously, could derail the 60-day trial set down next year and push it out to 2023.
Justice Le Miere made an order for the trial parties to confer on “programming” of the trial in the belief that it would still go ahead in April but wanted all further correspondence about the appeal’s outcome to be directed to Justice Smith, who will now manage the case.
In his final appearance presiding over the matter, Justice Le Miere, with a twinkle of a smile, called the case “complex and substantive” to administer and for the parties to navigate legally, and thanked the professionalism of all the counsel involved.
Justice Le Miere is expected to retire early next year, once he turns 70 in February.