The mining and mineral resources disciplines involve a number of activities ranging from developing or reviewing mineral exploration programs for potential financial investors through developing mining plans to environmental permitting. When disagreements arise in such projects they are usually because some aspect of the project has failed. This may be a result of an ambiguous agreement between two parties, agreed to originally for the sake of project expediency. Now, each claim is based on their interpretation of the original agreement. Often, an investigation conducted to underwrite the project is later found to be allegedly flawed and a partner wishes to withdraw from the project, without financial malice or obligation.
Litigation is often the result.
Other discipline activities also lead to litigation. Litigation could also result in international projects and within groups of multi-national corporations. Disagreements in methods, interpretation of drilling data, chemical analyses , and geophysical surveys often result in litigation. Mineral exploration and environmental investigations have many common characteristics. Both require a familiarity with the geologic literature and both involve drilling, sampling, and analyzing for anomalous compounds present at or near the surface of the earth.