Re AQI, The Judge used some pretty srong language against IMA. Any one have an opinion what AQI is worth now?
Judge Koenigsberg's decision:
While Aquiline filed the lawsuit in 2004, the events in the case, as summarized by the judge, date back to 2002, when Newmont Mining Corp. was looking for a buyer for Calcatreau as part of its exit from Argentina. Aquiline and IMA both perused the project data, which was subject to industry-standard confidentiality agreements.
IMA decided against buying the property, but not before company geologist Paul Lhotka spotted some interesting sample results in Newmont's data room. It was these results that led him to the Navidad area, the judge says. At first, Mr. Lhotka did not look at a detailed file with the data, but curiosity eventually got the better of him.
The judge chastised the company for the denying it used the data. IMA originally said it did not use the file, but eventually admitted at trial that it staked Navidad based on its contents. "At best this represented wishful thinking and at worst deliberate dishonesty," the judge wrote.
Judge Koenigsberg also criticized IMA for ignoring a warning from Mr. Lhotka that the confidential information could be a problem. In an e-mail dated Nov. 20, 2002, to IMA's management, he said "it is unclear to me if such confidential data could be used to acquire lands outside the 2 km boundary."
"IMA could have negotiated [for the data]. Alternatively, IMA could have pursued property ... through publicly available information. What it could not do - especially after Mr. Lhotka raised the concern in his email of whether use of the data for the acquisition of claims was lawful - was ignore that concern, ignore the circumstances in which it received the data, and plunge ahead, using the data to stake the claims without prior authorization for such use," she wrote.
The judge rejected IMA's argument that its claims were outside a two-kilometre exclusion zone in the agreement. Although the wording may have been unclear, she found the agreement prohibited IMA from using the data, be it in or outside the exclusion zone. "No reasonable vendor would provide information outside the restricted area ... if that information would not ... be treated as confidential," Judge Koenigsberg found.
The judge also rejected a key point raised by IMA, one that could have future implications for confidentiality agreements. IMA argued if it had known that the scope of the data was so broad, it would have had to "consider very carefully" if that would interfere with its own work. "In my view, while generally this appears to be a reasonable consideration and consistent with the evidence of some of the experts, it has little relevance on the facts here," she wrote.
Judge Koenigsberg ordered IMA to transfer the claims and ordered Aquiline to pay reasonable acquisition and development costs. The judge declined to order any damages, and said it would be very difficult to accurately determine the value of Navidad. An "educated crystal ball gaze" heard at trial was $85-million (U.S.). |
