Rinehart wins court battle with Rio Tinto

Mining giant Rio Tinto was Wednesday ordered to pay Australia's richest person Gina Rinehart and her late father's business partner an estimated Aus$200 million (US $145 million) in royalties after losing a court battle. Billionaire Rinehart and heirs of her father Lang Hancock's business partner Peter Wright went to court to claim royalties from two iron ore mines - Channar and Eastern Range - in Western Australia's resources-rich Pilbara region that the men sold to Rio in 1970.
Under the deal, Hancock and Wright were to receive ongoing income from what the mines produced. But Rio argued the pits were not in their possession for all of the period and therefore the Anglo-Australian firm was not liable to pay the royalties. But the High Court ruled that Rio subsidiary Mount Bruce Mining had to pay the descendents of the men the royalties, estimated to be Aus$200 million, court documents showed. An earlier decision by the Supreme Court of New South Wales state in 2013 made a similar finding, but in the Court of Appeal later ruled that royalties were payable for Eastern Range but not Channar.