‘They’ve made their bed’: Gina Rinehart’s lawyers slam kids’ legal attack

Lawyers for Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting have levelled a scathing attack against her eldest children for conflating her absence from the high-stakes Hope Downs battle with guilt, warning the error of their ways would soon “sink in”.

John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart have long claimed their pioneer grandfather Lang Hancock left them the sprawling iron ore deposit, now home to four operational mines Hancock Prospecting owns with Rio Tinto, in a family trust when he died in 1992.

Western Australia’s mining dynasty, of which the nation’s richest person Gina Rinehart is the most famous member, is embroiled in a court fight over the rights to the Hope Downs projects in the state’s iron-rich Pilbara region.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Rinehart maintains the tenements were only in the trust because Lang shifted them out of the Hancock Prospecting empire as part of a scheme to siphon cash, which placed him in breach of his duties and necessitated a bid to undo it.

But John and Bianca say their mother, Australia’s richest person, wrestled it back in a “calculated scheme” designed to leave the trust beholden to her, “frozen in time” and defraud them and their sisters, Hope and Ginia.

On Friday, Hancock Prospecting’s lawyer Noel Hutley SC, told the court much of John and Bianca’s case against their billionaire mother hinged on a court rule whereby it is inferred that if a party chooses not to give evidence, it’s because it would not have helped their case.

In fact, Hutley revealed more than 160 findings in the pair’s closing submissions relied on the Jones and Dunkel inference, which he said was so pervasive it became a stepping stone to many of their arguments.

“They’ve summarised a whole raft of findings they say the court should agree with, with the inference being critical to all those findings,” he said.

“It is totally misconceived … when you take it away from their case, it becomes near impossible to make any of the findings asserted by Bianca and John.

“They use the inference to fill all manner of gaps … those findings must fall away, and with it, so does Bianca and John’s case.”

Hutley warned John and Bianca’s reliance on the inference may create a headache for Justice Jennifer Smith when it came time to make a ruling, with every finding having to be dissected.

And he predicted the pair’s case may radically change when the reality of that sunk in, and urged Smith not to allow it.

“Your honour will have to fillet hundreds of thousands of paragraphs and ensure that nothing based upon a Jones and Dunkel inference infects anything else,” he said.

“They’ve chosen to run this case in an unorthodox fashion and what we don’t want to hear in reply is a new case which seeks to ignore what they’ve done.

“It’s so fundamental to their case, we fear once the recognition of this sinks in, we’re going to get a whole new case, and they shouldn’t be allowed to do that.

“They’ve made their bed, and we say they’re stuck with it … your honour has listened to this case long enough.”

Friday marked the fourth day of Hancock Prospecting’s closing submissions, which Hutley spent poring over letters between Lang and Rinehart at the time of his alleged scheme, the detrimental impact it had on their relationship and what he described as his final-days “mea culpa”.

John and Bianca’s lawyers are expected to deliver their closing submissions in a matter of weeks before lawyers for the two mining dynasties they’re warring with, and mine owner Rio Tinto, have the final word.

It brings to a close a four-month trial for the stoush, which began in 2010 when Rinehart was sued by the billionaire descendants of Lang’s business partner, Peter Wright, and the company left behind by Pilbara engineer Don Rhodes.

Wright Prospecting claims it is entitled to a portion of the royalties from Hope Downs under a 1980s partnership deed, while Rhodes’ family company, DFD Rhodes, wants a 1.25 per cent stake in its proceeds.

John and Bianca joined the lawsuit in 2016, but have spent years wrangling with their mother over the asset behind closed doors.

But Hancock Prospecting and its executive chair Rinehart maintain the Hope Downs assets and royalties belong to them.

Lang and Wright began laying claim to some of the country’s most resource-rich tenements half a century ago, inking royalty agreements that have elevated their future generations to the top of the country’s rich-list.

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