legal claim dropped

Dont know if this will get moderated. Its only an article from todays press !

From Mining News

Tania Winter
Tuesday, 7 September 2010


QUEENSLAND copper company CuDeco has reportedly dropped its $A200 million legal claim against online forum HotCopper without explanation.

CuDeco and executive chairman Wayne McCrae never revealed to the market the size of its claim for damages for misleading and deceptive conduct and injurious falsehood, which it filed in the Queensland Supreme Court.

However, the moderator of the CuDeco forum on HotCopper, Yoda, confirmed to the Australian Financial Review that the claim was for $200 million and related to allegedly defamatory posts in July this year.

CuDeco has not released an announcement confirming it had dropped the claim.

MiningNews.net did contact the companys Southport office but was unable to confirm this at the time of deadline.

Yoda reportedly told the AFR that CuDeco blamed the HotCopper posts for the weakness in its share price and the failure to raise $200 million in capital.

CuDeco announced its intention to file the legal claim on August 18, the day before it released the long-awaited first Rocklands copper resource update.

The new resource of 30.94 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.24% copper was only slightly larger than the previous estimate of 25Mt at 2% copper equivalent after $40 million was spent on drilling.

The news failed to excite the market with the companys share price falling from $4.79 on August 13 to $1.705 by August 23, before rebounding slightly to $2.22 the following day and then dropping back to $1.95 on August 26.

It has since been trading around the $2 mark.

Comments from its chairman in mid-August that the project may need another five years of exploration also did not help the share price slide.

While the company is forecasting the start of a 3 million tonne per annum mining operation at the main deposit in 2012, McCrae said another five years of exploration would be needed to complete a thorough geological investigation of all areas identified as high probability target zones of mineralisation.

He added that preliminary pit optimisation had also showed Rocklands would have a strip ratio of 2.57:1 for the first 10 years.

HotCopper suspended the CuDeco forum after the company announced its intention to file the legal suit, but has since reopened.

Yoda told the AFR the forum had received a faxed notice of discontinuance from CuDeco's legal team and the courts website confirmed one was filed.

CuDeco had initially planned to file the action against HotCopper and two posters, but the actual claim was only against HotCopper's parent company Report Card and Scott Nijman.

Shares in CuDeco were unchanged in morning trade at $2.02.