A Dawson City miner has been granted the right to buy out his former partner for placer claims on the east side of the Dome Road in Dawson City.
The ownership dispute between Darrell Carey and Rod Adams came down to who was willing to pony up the most cash for the 25 claims in question.
Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale opened the sealed bids in court Thursday.
Carey had the highest bid of $752,200, while Adams bid $716,000.
Since he won, Carey now has 10 days to finalize the deal. He’ll get the claims and Adams will get half of the $752,200.
Bids had to be at least $500,000, the value of the claims back in 2013.
Carey’s representative had originally argued against just selling the claims to the highest bidder. He said that would be unfair because Adams is “a much wealthier man than (Carey) is” and would almost certainly outbid him.
But Veale decided earlier this year to go with sealed bids. The judge called that process “a well-established principle in business law.”
Outside court, Carey said he was able to pull together loans from friends to get the money for his bid.
“To tell you the truth I couldn’t believe the friends that came up and supported me.”
He said he only had about $180,000 of his own to contribute.
Carey has other claims to think about before mining these ones. He said he’ll be focused on his Slinky site first.
Carey’s Slinky mine, on the other side of the Dome Road, has been the subject of controversies for the last several years.
Those claims are located where the Yukon government wants to build a new subdivision.
A deal was reached in 2014 that saw the Yukon government agree to reroute the Dome Road around Carey’s claims to give him easier access. In exchange for this work, to which the government committed $1.3 million, Carey agreed to finish mining the area by the end of 2017 and to surrender some or all of his claims after that.
The government is considering pushing that deadline to 2018 since the road work took longer than expected.
Adams was not in court yesterday. His lawyer appeared in court for him instead. When reached by phone he said he didn’t have much to say about losing the bid.
“What happened was fair. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Contact Ashley Joannou at
ashleyj@yukon-news.com