A man who fought for more than a decade to maintain his rights to a mining claim in northwestern Montana died two days after a jury awarded him nearly $2.6 million.
A Lincoln County jury awarded the money to Arnold Bakie for a mining company’s use of Bakie’s claims to access an estimated $8 billion worth of silver and copper claims beneath the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness.
Bakie, 70, was killed in a logging accident on Oct. 19, the Flathead Beacon reported .
In 2007, Mines Management Inc. subsidiary Montanore Minerals Corp. sought to have Bakie’s claims declared invalid. A state judge ruled they were valid, so the companies sought rights of way to tunnel through the claims.
A federal judge allowed the easements, but he said Bakie and other investors, including former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, were entitled to fair compensation. Jurors awarded the others $750,000.
Officials with Hecla Mining, which owns the Montanore Mine, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.
Stephen Brown, an attorney representing the investor group, said he expects Montanore will appeal the jury’s decision.
Topics Lawsuits
Was this article valuable?
Here are more articles you may enjoy.
Big Food Readies New Strategy Against RFK Jr. Push in States 
Rotting Apple: Berkley Explains Property Market, Company Appetite 
CyberCube: Insured Loss Estimate From AWS Outage Likely About $40M 
Trucking App Trucker Path Launches Retail Insurance Agency 
