Mining Law and Consultation

The Walstad Law Group brings substantial experience with mining construction to your mining project. We have had experience in dealing with design and construction deficiencies, budget and cost overruns, scheduling challenges and delays, and contractor-owner disputes and litigation. Our approach is pro-active – we work to bring disputes to an early resolution, if possible, while guarding our clients' rights in case dispute resolution must go beyond negotiation or mediation. Mining construction constitutes some of the most challenging projects in the world, offering both substantial rewards with a project is carefully planned and structured, and substantial risk when key project elements are not carefully considered and dealt with.

Walstad Law Group Experience. Some of the instances in which we have provided consultation and legal counsel on major mining construction projects include:

• Rocky Mountain Coal Mine Rehabilitation and Re-Opening
• Expansion and Reconstruction of Major Tailings Facility
• Opening of Major Open Pit Gold and Copper Mine in South America
• Substantial Project Changes in Scope and Method Imposed by Owner on Hard Rock Mine
• Consultation and Drafting of Joint Venture Coal Mine Expansion Project in Illinois

Our experience includes such mining infrastructure and mining technology and machinery as cyclones, crushers, grinders, pulverizers, ball mills, rod mills, cone mills, hammer mills, crushing and screening plants, dewatering plants, smelters, smelting, leaching tanks, flotation tanks, electrolytic refining, as well as transport infrastructure as varied as lifts, skips, slurry pipelines, railroad, truck transport and ocean-going vessels.

Owner and Contractor Services. Walstad Law Group assists both Owners and Contractors in

• Drafting contract documents designed to create clear and cost-efficient owner-contractor and owner-designer and engineer relationships. Owner-Contractor contracts and bidding documents need to recognize and deal with the unique features of your project. Cookie-cutter documents are a trap in the highly complex and challenging world of mining construction, and, as the dollar value and complexity of the work increases, so does the dangers posed by ill-considered contract and bidding documents.
• Review of engineers and designers and of contractors and subcontractors to identify the most qualified, reliable and claims-averse candidates to perform your work.
• Review of Procurement Plans to determine the most cost effective and efficient means of purchasing, transport and warehousing of materials for your project.
• Partnering and total quality management procedures to get the project started with the kinds of personal relations between management and supervisory personnel on both sides to foster cooperation, mutual goal-setting and communication between parties to promote project completion on time and within budget with a high degree of quality. Projects we have taken through the partnering process report a high success rate in claims avoidance based on early and effective communication between participants before difficulties can grow into claims, the parties circle the wagons and successful project completion becomes a consideration subsidiary to claims victories.
• Claims evaluation and negotiation. Walstad Law Group has substantial experience in claims evaluation and negotiation. We have learned to look at Owner-Contractor problems from many angles and to work for rapid and cost-efficient resolution of differences, if at all possible. Too often a "scorched earth" approach irreversibly damages relations between the parties, with unnecessary but long-term effects on the bottom-lines of one or more of the project participants. We have learned to utilize such techniques as executive-level discussion of key project issues and mediation to bring parties to the negotiating table to resolve disputes instead of inflaming grievances and differences.
• Litigation. In those cases where resolution remains out-of-reach, we bring our substantial litigation experience to the fore and utilize the cutting edge litigation techniques to obtain the best ruling we can for our clients. The courts are the final recourse for protecting the rights of both individuals and companies when threatened by an opponent which will not listen to reason and deal fairly.

If you would like to contact a Walstad Law Group attorney to discuss your mining-related project, claim or difficulty, click here.