Gina Rinehart and estranged kids to pay bulk of legal costs after royalties trial

Gina Rinehart and estranged kids to pay bulk of legal costs after royalties trial Thu 2 Jul 2026 at 6:14pm In short: A WA judge has ruled Gina Rinehart and two of her children will have to pay a large chunk of the legal costs stemming from a court battle over riches from lucrative iron ore mines. The actual sums of money to be paid were not determined by the judge, who found this would be a waste of court resources. What's next? The complicated task of working out exactly how much each party is liable for will be determined by further proceedings, before ultimately being decided by a different judge. Mining billionaire Gina Rinehart and her two estranged children will have to pay the lion's share of the legal costs of a mammoth trial that determined the payment of royalties from some of Australia's most lucrative iron ore mines, a WA judge has ruled. Earlier this year, Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Smith found Mrs Rinehart's company Hancock Prospecting owed hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties to the companies of her father's business partners, Wright Prospecting and DFD Rhodes. That judgment was at least a decade in the making, and the costs order, made this week by the same judge, came after more legal wrangling involving at least two dozen lawyers, both in open court and in private mediation. Wright Prospecting, owned by the descendants of Peter Wright, a long-term business partner of Mrs Rinehart's late father Lang Hancock, will have 40 per cent of the costs it incurred fighting for its rightful share of royalties paid. Hancock Prospecting would have to pay 30 per cent and John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart, Mrs Rinehart's two eldest children who are estranged from her and involved in separate, long running legal feuds with her over their inheritance, would have to pay 10 per cent, Justice Smith ruled. But the actual sums of money owed were not determined by the judge, who found this would be a waste of court resources. "Given that the assessment of costs will likely entail a very lengthy time consuming process requiring the review of an enormous volume of invoices, such a task is not an appropriate use of a judge's time," she found. Instead, the complicated task of working out exactly how much each party is liable for will likely be determined by further proceedings, before ultimately being decided by another judge. Iron ore stoush The costs order comes after a dispute between the parties over who has the right to billions of dollars worth of iron ore riches from the Hope Downs mines in WA's Pilbara region, now co-owned by Hancock Prospecting and Rio Tinto. Both Wright Prospecting and DFD Rhodes, owed by the family of another of Lang Hancock's business partners, Don Rhodes, had argued they were entitled to a share, having helped identify the tenements decades ago in partnership with Mr Hancock. Wright Prospecting was successful in its claim for royalties, dating back to when the first of the Hope Downs' mines began production almost two decades ago. That amount is also yet to be determined, but Justice Smith wrote in her judgment it was "likely to be in the realm of hundreds of millions of dollars". Its claim for equity in the mines, however, was found not to stand up, with Justice Smith ruling Hancock Prospecting as the rightful owner of the lucrative asset. Rhodes was partly successful in its claim for royalties, and orders were made in May for Hancock Prospecting to pay 50 per cent of Rhodes' costs. But Mrs Rinehart lost her bid for her company's legal costs to be paid. "I am not satisfied that the HPPL Parties should be awarded any of its costs," she wrote. Higher legal fees allowed The judgment also allowed the usual cap on legal fees to be waived because of the "unusual difficulty, complexity and importance of the matters raised in both the Rhodes and WPPL proceedings," Justice Smith wrote. She allowed Rhodes and Wright to recover legal fees 50 per cent higher than the usual limit in certain circumstances outlined in the judgement. While it is difficult to quantify the total amount, when last updated in 2024, the hourly rate for a Counsel was capped at $528 and a Senior Counsel at $781. Proceedings in chambers — outlined as two days preparation and a one day hearing — is capped at a total of $15,840 for Counsel and $23,430 for Senior Counsel. The trial in question ran over 51 days, with lawyers involved at least as far back as 2010 for Wright Prospecting.