Australian supreme court has stated that the company is entitled to pay royalty Gina Rinehart and Angela Bennett and her brother Michael Wright, passing a ruling in favor of plaintiffs.
The Wright and Rinehart families issued a lawsuit against Rio Tinto claiming royalty of more than 20 years from iron ore beneath about 150km2 of the Pilbara.
The complainant cited an agreement singed on 5 May 1970 by their predecessors, Lang Hancock and Peter Wright.
Rio Tinto, however, asserted that it did not owe royalties to the descendants of Hancock and Wright claiming that the company had
lost the control of the land from 1974, before resuming it again in 1979.
Nonetheless, Ms Rinehart and the Wright family counsel Allan Myers QC argued that the Rio’s reason for not paying the royalty citing the control void is ‘commercial nonsense’.
