Court win for Palmer and Mineralogy

Clive Palmer has had a minor win in a court fight against mining executive Shankar Madan, over royalties from Mineralogy’s Balmoral project.

Supreme Court of Western Australia Justice Kenneth Martin yesterday delivered his decision on the procedure between Mr Palmer’s Mineralogy and Mr Madan, who filed court action under the name Hem Shanker Madan.

In his judgment, Justice Martin allowed Mineralogy’s application to have separate trials of issues.

Mr Madan claimed 1 per cent of the net profits of Mineralogy’s Balmoral project every year, under an agreement the parties signed in 1985.

Justice Martin's judgment said Mr Madan was a consulting geologist to Mineralogy at the rate of $225 per full day.

However, Mr Madan claimed the critical part of the agreement was the promise of the payment of 1 per cent of net profits derived by Mineralogy from any source during the course of his company's involvement.

In response, Mineralogy claimed there was never any perfected binding legal agreement with Mr Madan.

Mineralogy applied to defer the trial until necessary, and split the legal issues to calculate the financial damage after a primary trial over Mr Madan’s alleged contract breaches.

Mr Madan argued a split hearing was unworkable but Justice Martin found in favour of Mineralogy wanting to separate the legal issues.

Justice Martin also ordered Mr Madan to pay Mineralogy’s costs in this proceeding, being the unsuccesful party.

The proceedings started when Mr Madan filed a writ in the WA Supreme Court in April 2021, naming Mineralogy as a defendant.

Mr Madan is also claiming royalties from the $US215 million Mineralogy made in sale of Sino Iron to a subsidiary of Chinese company CITIC Limited.

The sale occured after Sino and Korean Steel signed agreements for the right to extract 1 billion tonnes of magnetite ore from the Balmoral project.