A Really Disheartening Prospecting Experience

[jasong]

2 hours ago, Clay Diggins said:

I see you still misunderstand the laws regarding the validity of mining claims jasong.

We can agree to disagree, as we always have there Clay. First: CFR's absolutely can be presented in, and taken in consideration in a federal court room. Second, the same discovery requirement is found in both US code (Title 30, sec 23) as well as the General Mining Act of 1872. They all require a discovery to be made, usually prior to location. It's not just the BLM that can invalidate a claim on this basis, claim validity can be challenged in court as well by a citizen.

As you may or may not know, I am not just blowing hot air, I have personally been in federal court and pursued litigation involving topics (among others) surrounding this very issue which I'd like to be able to share since much of the precedent is very old and I have very modern experience. But I am bound by confidentiality regarding the mutually agreed upon and private outcome and while the tangential public matters can be discussed, it's the advice of my lawyer not to. So my ability to participate in this discussion with the level of detail that I'd like is simply not possible and so I'm at a disadvantage here.

We have two different interpretations of mining law. It's likely that neither of us is absolutely or specifically right in any instance. 

Law tries to be absolute, but it isn't. Language by nature is interpretational and vague. Times also change. This is why even Supreme Court justices disagree and why we have 9 of them. It's one reason why we have courts in general to begin with - to present and consider different interpretations of the law. You seem to enjoy telling me I am wrong over the last decade or more, but I assure you, your interpration of the law is not as absolute as you tend to represent it as being.

Anyways, my point was simply that a person can read, understand, and then potentially use the law to protect themselves in cases like these. I am always prepared to defend my rights and property, even if it means using all my resources to fight for what I believe in. I've done it, and I hope people understand there may be recourse available to them too, but it's up to them to educate themselves and determine if that is true first.

[Steve Herschbach]

There is a difference between being right by the law, and simply dealing with the system as it is. The practical aspects surrounding what normal people can pursue, as far as getting help from law enforcement, pursuing legalities in court, etc., are quite limited. Bottom line is prevention is by far the best solution here. Do not ever buy a mining claim or lease unless you know what you are doing, or get someone that does. That’s the simple takeaway here.

[Clay Diggins]

6 minutes ago, jasong said:

We can agree to disagree, as we always have there Clay. First: CFR's absolutely can be presented in, and taken in consideration in a federal court room. Second, the same discovery requirement is found in both US code (Title 30, sec 23) as well as the General Mining Act of 1872. They all require a discovery to be made, usually prior to location.

We have two different interpretations of mining law. Yours tends to follow the corporate friendly interpretation where blanket staking 1000 claims with no prospecting work is within the bounds of the law. And mine tends to be an small scale mining and individual prospector interpretation where such things are not what mining law was intended for and can be challenged in court. 

 

Please don't try the strawman argument with me jasong. I respect you and your opinions but that respect will dissolve quickly if you try to put words in my mouth. I never even implied that a discovery wasn't necessary to locate a mining claim. My post was in response to your demonstratively false assumption that location discovery also had to be proof of a valuable mineral deposit for a claim to be valid. There is no such requirement or law.

Yes I often do work with those big mining companies as well as small miners like yourself. I don't see any need to defend their location practices. I have never experienced a mining or exploration company that didn't make a genuine effort to prospect and discover valuable minerals before locating mining claims. Not only would that be economically foolish but it would get their stock promptly delisted from the exchanges. There are strict due diligence and reporting rules for those who offer mining stock to the public. Those security exchanges rules are based on, and closely follow, the mining laws and court decisions.

I imagine some fly by night "mining" company may have foolishly tried to locate without discovery - crooks abound in all industries. Assuming a mining company hasn't made a discovery before locating claims is due to ignorance that is easily remedied. Look over the heavily regulated public statements mining companies are required to make when they add mining properties and you will find clear, well defined statements as to what their discovery, and location, are based on. It's public information.

And no - CFRs are not law, they are agency regulations. They can be presented in court along with public records, individual statements, pictures and affidavits from your mother stating what a nice boy you are. If your mother disagrees with the CFR regulations the court will give deference to the CFR over your mother's opinion but an actual law will always trump a  CFR. That's why the federal agencies are often ordered by courts to change their faulty CFR regulations to comply with the actual law.

I'm not engaging in an argument with you jasong. I'm attempting to educate yourself and others how the law actually works and what it means. Education is the key to cleaning up mining industry problems and misinformation just creates rancor and obstructs the goal of a clean working mining claim system. I appreciate you engaging with us on this subject, hopefully a better understanding of the issues for readers will be the result.

Ultimately I think Steve nailed it. The real base of the problem is unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of the ignorance of uninformed claims buyers. When the rubber meets the road no mining claim is even worth the cost of the staking, recording and filing fees without evidence of mineable valuable minerals. A quit claim isn't a promise of value it's just one way to relinquish your individual right (or lack of rights) to a property - even if that property has no value or even if you don't own it. If we can communicate that simple fact to potential future claim buyers a lot of these problems will be solved.

 

 

[jasong]

Ok. I've said my piece, you've said yours. We disagree on that topic, and that's ok but I am not interested in going back and forth about it on forums. I also quickly edited one part you quoted me on above right after I posted, since upon consideration I wanted to be as accurate as possible and I know that both of us support both large and small scale mining in different ways and my observation could be misconstrued in terms of absolutes. But I wasn't putting words in your mouth anymore than you've done to me here in a few different instances. So I'm good with stopping this whole particular line of discussion here before it gets personal. I respect your body of mining law knowledge and work with mylandmatters, I just happen to disagree with some of your opinions and interpretations, as you do mine, and there is nothing wrong with that. 

Anyways back to the original topic - I agree awareness of these shady claim sellers is good. I'm all for increasing it. But the problem is awareness only goes so far as people read or listen, and my observation is that most of these people getting taken in by these claim sales are not people that read forums. They usually aren't even people that read ICMJ or the GPAA mag. I've met more than I can even remember myself in the field. How do you reach them then?

Raising awareness is good, but it is ineffective if it doesn't reach the people it's intended to reach. The BLM could send out notices or require them to be distributed with any new claims sales (like the lead based paint disclosures required for houses), Discovery channel could post on their gold shows, that might reach more of the intended audience. But then you end up with the same sort of boilerplate warnings and notices that everyone ignores on their pizza boxes, coffee cups, and shampoo bottles eventually and we're back to square 1.

Sometimes you can't knock a brick wall down by banging your head against it for 50 years. Often real change involves a change of ideas and methods. The question. as always, is just how much it really means to people, and just how much they are willing to sacrifice (and potentially lose) to try to change things.