SCOTT & OTHERS (TRADING AS NORTHERN MINERAL SYNDICATE) V. GRAYDEN & OTHERS (TRADING AS UNION MINERALS SYNDICATE)

MINERAL SYNDICATE)

GRAYDEN. & OTHERS (TRADING AS UNION.

MINERALS SYNDICA x

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Judgment delivered at___MELBOURNE __

on_M }

deo iain

SCOTT AND OTHERS TRADING AS NORTHERN MINERAL SYNDICATE

ve.

JEN _AND TRADING AS"UNTON MINERALS ON MI 5 SYNDICATE

ORDER

Appeal allowed with costs. Judgment of the

Supreme Court of Western Australia set aside. In lieu thereof order that judgment be entered for the plaintiffs, forming the Northern Mineral Syndicate, in the action for £2125.0.9 on the claim with costs and that the counterclaim of the defendants forming the Union Minerals Syndicate be dismissed with costs.

Costs in the Supreme Court to be taxed on the scale applicable to an action in which the sum of £2125 is

recovered with a certificate for three additional days of hearingand i hm Crimewt

sees

TODGMENT

SCOTT AND OTHERS TRADING AS THE NORTHERN MINERAL SYNDICATE

ve

GRAYDEN AND OTHERS TRADING AS THE UNION MINERALS SYNDICATE

DIXON C.J.

a

This appeal from the Supreme Court of Western Australia (Virtue J.) relates to the amount due from one mineral syndicate to another as a result of the one, for a stipulated reward, raising treating and marketing in the form of concentrates the minerals of the other. The appellants who constitute the Northern Mineral Syndicate were the plaintiffs in the action and the respondents who constitute

the Union Minerals Syndicate were the defendants. The former contracted to treat the mineral deposits belonging to the

latter. As a result of the dealings between them it was

found by Virtue J. that there was a balance in the latter's favour of £320.11.7. Accordingly the defendants recovered | Judgment for that amount on their counter claim. It is from this judgment that the plaintiffs now appeal.

The case comes from one of the attempts that were made in Western Australia to profit from the demand set up by the Government of the United States for a combination of the pentoxides of tantalum and of columbium, or as it is customary to call the element 'in England, niobiun. In 1952 the Defence Materials Procurement Agency of the United States put in operation a plan to accumulate a huge amount of the compound and offered a high price. In the Pilbara district behind Port Hedlend with Marble Bar perhaps as a focus there exists an area in which tantalum and niobium oxides accompanied by other minerals are to be found at or near the surface. The American offer appears to have led prospectors and others to take up various mineral leases in the area. Among these had been the plaintiffs who formed the Northern Mineral Syndicate. Near Turner River which runs not many miles from Port Hedland