Coal Giant Peabody Can’t Extinguish Investor’s North Goonyella Mine Fire Suit. RSHQ Investigation Report still not public
While taking its time to wind through the US legal system, the Class Action by US Super Funds still remains the most likely way that Underground Mine Workers will ever find out what actually occurred and the actions and inactions that caused the out of control spontaneous combustion, fire and explosions at North Goonyella in 2018.
There has been another hearing in New York and reporting on the hearing and its outcomes is further on in this post
So far all that the now RSHQ has ever said publicly are 3 one page press releases.
https://www.rshq.qld.gov.au/safety-notices/mines/incident-at-north-goonyella-coal-mine
https://www.rshq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1453361/north-goonyella-high-potential-incident.pdf
https://www.rshq.qld.gov.au/media/2021/former-north-goonyella-mine-officials-statutory-certificates-of-competency-cancelled
The RSHQ has not released anything since to make the Public aware that one of the 2 Management has appealed the decision with no court action likely till around September this year
The RSHQ has not released its own Investigation Report to the public and has resisted Right to Information requests dating back to 2020.
It is an absolute disgrace that the only way Queensland Mineworkers and the Public will likely find anything out is in a New York Civil Court, assuming Peabody, Kellow and Schwetz do not settle out of Court.
I have long stated
“You cannot understand what happened at Grosvenor, without understanding what happened at North Goonyella. They mine the same seam”
I just pose one question.
Would the Grosvenor explosion have occurred if the Mines Inspectorate had made available its findings and Recommendations to prevent spontaneous combustion in the 20 months between North Goonyella and Grosvenor?
Yet here we are 3 and half years on from North Goonyella, and coming up to 2 years since Grosvenor and not one part of the respective RSHQ Investigation Reports has been made available.
Anglo Management has escaped prosecution and RSHQ just issues another one pager saying Longwall Mining can recommence.
How are poor old face workers supposed to have any confidence that anything has changed with Anglo, its risk management practices and the oversight including the RSHQ Inspectors?
Coal Giant Peabody Can’t Extinguish Investor’s Mine Fire Suit
By Emilie Ruscoe ·
Law360 (March 8, 2022, 8:32 PM EST) — Peabody Energy Corp. can’t shake an investor’s suit accusing the company of misrepresenting the impact of a fire at one of its most profitable mines, a federal judge in Manhattan said Monday.
In his order, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York pared down the claims in the suit against the energy giant, finding that certain statements the company made about safety at its mines before the fire were exactly the kind of “general and self-congratulatory statements” courts typically categorize as inactionable corporate puffery.
But Judge Castel left other claims in the consolidated proposed class action intact, determining that the company and some of its executives apparently failed to disclose the fact that the company’s North Goonyella Mine, in Queensland, Australia, “was actually or likely on fire as of Sept. 22, 2018, when black smoke could be seen billowing from the mine.”
In the most recent version of the allegations, from March 2021, the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund, the lead plaintiff, claimed that Peabody misled investors about the safety of its mining operations and failed to properly explain what was going on after the coal mine was evacuated and eventually caught fire.
The pension fund claimed that Peabody shares were artificially inflated during that time, and eventually fell sharply after the company announced that because of the fire, it would be three or more years before the company could resume coal production at the site.
Peabody sought to shed the suit in September 2021, telling Judge Castel that the investors “make these bald allegations even though there is no claim that any defendant benefited from the fraud, even though the risks of elevated gas levels in a mine were disclosed before and throughout the putative class period, and even though plaintiffs concede that the situation at the mine was ‘ever-changing’ and ‘extremely difficult to predict.'”
Alongside the company, the suit names Peabody’s former CEO, Glenn L. Kellow, and its former chief financial officer, Amy B. Schwetz.
Representatives for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
The investors are represented by Christine M. Fox, Michael P. Canty and Charles Farrell of Labaton Sucharow LLP.
Peabody and its executives are represented by Karin A. DeMasi and Carolyn Young of Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP.
