Wen Wu

Green iron start-up Element Zero is continuing its fight over search orders won by rival Fortescue that it claimed were a massive over-reach.

Fortescue has defeated a bid by its former CFO’s green iron start-up to set aside search orders that were said to have been secured “off the back of egregious material non-disclosure”.  

Fortescue has rejected Element Zero’s “implausible” claims that the start-up’s founder was instructed by the mining giant’s IP manager to access and delete certain documents after his resignation, as it defends allegations that search orders it won over the alleged misappropriation of its confidential information were based on weak evidence.

Start-up Element Zero has attacked search orders won by Fortescue over the alleged misappropriation of the mining company’s confidential information by three former employees, calling the orders an “industrial scale forensic debacle” won on weak evidence and the failure to disclose material information.

A judge appears reluctant to allow Element Zero to cross-examine an external lawyer hired by mining company Fortescue over alleged “egregious material non-disclosure” during Fortescue’s bid for “extreme and unorthodox” search orders against the green startup’s founders.

It would only have been possible for start-up Element Zero to deliver an operational green iron prototype in two years with its assumed funding with the help of a “substantial amount of information” on how the project should progress, metals giant Fortescue claims.

Mining company Fortescue, which alleges green iron startup Element Zero misused confidential information, is fighting a bid to cross-examine its external lawyer as part of an application to quash search orders.

Seeking to quash search orders won by metals company Fortescue against former employees who founded a green iron rival, a lawyer for the start-up has said three terabytes of data were indiscriminately copied, including confidential, privileged and irrelevant material.

Metal mining company Fortescue hired private investigators to spy on former employees who created green iron start-up Element Zero, sifting through their mail, taking photos of their children and following them to Kmart, a court has heard. 

International fugitive Jean Nassif, who headed troubled property developer Toplace, has lost his bid to reinstate defamation proceedings against Harbour Radio and 2GB host Ray Hadley, with a judge saying there was no evidence he would return to Australia to prosecute the case.