Gina Rinehart’s two eldest children have won the right to have the next stage of their family’s long-running dispute over mining profits heard in open court.
Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock are fighting for a larger stake in the family’s mining empire, claiming their billionaire mother wrongly transferred valuable mining assets away from a family trust set up to benefit them by their grandfather, Lang Hancock.
On Thursday federal court justice Jacqueline Gleeson ruled that a dispute over the validity of a number of deeds preventing the Rinehart children suing their mother should go to trial and not to confidential arbitration, as Gina Rinehart had sought.
The two Rinehart children argue they were pressured into signing the deeds without being told of the ramifications.
The case is due to return to court on 30 June.
In 2015 Bianca Rinehart wrested control of the family’s multibillion-dollar Hope Margaret Hancock Trust from her mother after a lengthy battle in the New South Wales supreme court.
Gina Rinehart has slipped from No 1 to No 4 on the latest BRW list of Australia’s richest people, due to falling iron ore prices and her daughter’s legal win.
Bianca Rinehart made the list at No 60 with wealth of $905m.
