Two years, 30 hearings, 9 million seized documents and dozens of affidavits later, one of the dirtiest and most personal legal battles – between billionaire Andrew Forrest and one of his former close friends Michael Masterman – is now moot.

It was settled with a whimper on Wednesday with no admissions, no concessions and neither responsible for anything other than their respective legal costs.

But given the tens of millions of dollars this case would have generated in legal expenses, the entire episode has turned out to be an example of a big company using a sledgehammer to swat a fly, an exercise that reeks of excess testosterone, too much ego and motivated partly by personal feelings.

Forrest’s Fortescue had claimed Masterman’s start-up, Element Zero, engaged in what was essentially corporate espionage – with the green tech start-up allegedly stealing a recipe to produce green iron that the trio developed while on Fortescue company’s time

Masterman and his two colleagues who founded Element Zero – Bart Kolodziejczyk and Bjorn Winther-Jensen – all used to work at Fortescue. The latter two were heavily involved in developing technical solutions around the production of green iron. At the time, Fortescue was developing hydrogen-based solutions to aid its pursuit of the green ore holy grail.

Meanwhile, Element Zero’s model involves an alternative technology using electro-chemical processes to convert any grade of iron ore into high-purity green iron.

Fortescue alleged that this intellectual property was developed while Kolodziejczyk and Winther-Jensen were working at Fortescue.

Masterman had been a long time go-to guy for Forrest, having helped him with arranging finance from the early days at the billionaire’s nickel company Anaconda, and the team had paired up at Fortescue at different times and worked with companies associated with the Forrest family’s private interests.

It was Fortescue’s tactics in trying to find evidence that elevated the legal saga into a headline stealing case. In particular, Fortescue’s use of private detectives to surveil and photograph the three men and their wives and children.

Fortescue was also successful in receiving court approval for raids on homes and offices of the principals of Element Zero in which 9 million documents were seized.

The spying was done by Lancasters Investigations, a company founded by former British SAS soldier turned private investigator Robert Lancaster, which produced a 600-page report for Fortescue. Lancaster has posted photos of himself holding weapons on Instagram, and photos from his days as a soldier. It was revealed in court that Fortescue’s in-house legal counsel, Adrian Huber, gave direct instructions to the private investigations group.

Forrest distanced himself from these more aggressive invasive manoeuvres, but was strident and emotive about pursuing Element Zero through the courts.

Forrest said last year that the Element Zero team had burnt the bridges behind them “like the Nazis pulling out of Poland”.

“You want to send emails full of our data over there then eliminate it, you’ll be held to the full responsibility of the law,” he said.

“There is an overarching message here; you’re not going to be paid to develop technology with a whole heap of other people, at really serious risk and cost to the entire company and your workmates … and then send that technology to another email address and think that’s OK,” he said.

“That’s not OK.”

All the while Element Zero’s lawyers have argued that Fortescue was attempting to draw out the case in the hopes that the defendant would run out of money.

In the end, Fortescue ran out of evidentiary ammunition – unable to find the smoking gun in the legion of documents it obtained from Element Zero using what is called an Anton Pillar order that allows a party to a lawsuit to search premises and seize evidence without prior notice to the other party, to prevent its destruction or concealment.

Element Zero’s $US10 million in funds raised to develop its technology has been seriously diminished defending its case. It will need a lot more where that came from to determine its commercial viability and build manufacturing sites.

It makes you wonder whether Fortescue would have achieved a better outcome if it just took a stake in Element Zero, rather than drag the executives through court?

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