Monument Mining Ltd. v. Balendran Chong & Bodi, 2012 BCSC 1769

This may be the final decision in the ongoing litigation concerning allegations of defamation and slander of title in connection with a gold mine in Malaysia. We first reported on this litigation in Mining in the Courts, Vol. I, after the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) overturned the lower court's decision to strike the action as disclosing no reasonable claim (2010 BCCA 373). In this decision, the BCCA reviewed the case on its merits and dismissed the action. It is unknown whether the decision is being appealed.

Monument Mining Ltd. (Monument), through a series of subsidiary companies, controls and operates the Selinsing Gold Mine in Malaysia. In August 2007, four letters were sent by the defendant Balendran Chong & Bodi, a law firm in Malaysia, on the instruction of its clients (who were also defendants in the lawsuit), including one letter to a Vancouver law firm. The letters claimed that Monument had entered into an agreement to sell the gold mine when