Supreme Court judge shreds $6.45m of claims by Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy in row with CITIC’s Sino Iron

A WA Supreme Court judge has shredded $6.45 million of bills, rent and wages claimed by Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy after describing its details as nebulous, embarrassing and grossly obfuscatory. Tossing chunks of Mineralogy’s claims against Sino Iron project miner CITIC, Justice Kenneth Martin has blasted what he described as the Palmer flagship’s “slow drip feed of morsels of information”. “Common sense and basic fairness dictates that the counterparty should know the case that it is being asked to meet before trial,” Justice Martin said “Here, the position has always been, and remains, a matter for speculation.” His decision represents another loss to Mineralogy as it tries to build a case for CITIC to pay its costs of administering lucrative Pilbara mining contracts. Those contracts allow the Chinese group’s subsidiaries to mine and process magnetite iron ore on land Mr Palmer controls under a State Agreement. The contracts have turned Mr Palmer into an iron ore royalties billionaire, but have also been the catalyst for seemingly endless battles in the WA Supreme Court and other courts. Mineralogy launched a Supreme Court legal action in May 2021 to recover $19.8m in legal bills incurred in 34 legal battles with Sino Iron project companies and about another $7m in various costs of administering its agreements with Sino Iron. Mineralogy agreed last year to slash its headline legal bill claim from $19.8m to $11.6m. In a decision in October blasting the other elements of Mineralogy’s claims, Justice Martin said Mr Palmer’s company was trying to claw back legal costs regardless of whether it “won, lost, drew or even withdrew” its legal battles with the Sino Iron project companies. Justice Martin described information supporting it for internal costs and rent as a “non-specific jumble of words”. The judge gave Mineralogy a chance to reformulate its claim. But his latest judgment blasts the company for not explaining how internal wages and employee superannuation bills could be assessed as costs in administering its mining agreement with Sino Iron project companies. “More is called for than the deployment of vacuous phrases,” Justice Martin said while chucking out Mineralogy’s Perth office expenses claims amounting to $2.92m. “On the face of it, Mineralogy incurring costs to keep its tenements in good order does not amount to it administering [the agreements]. Something more is required. “ Justice Martin also threw out Mineralogy’s claim for $816,853 in rent for its West Perth office and slashed its staff legal costs claim from $3.17m to $377,959. He described as “grossly obfuscatory” attempts by Mineralogy to claim that $2.8m of its legal staff costs were necessarily attributable to administering its agreements with CITIC companies. There was a “legally embarrassing” lack of detail in response to legitimate calls by CITIC parties for Mineralogy to explain how legal costs incurred from 2006 to 2021 were costs incurred in administering the Sino Ore project agreements.