IMA offers $100,000 to settle pesky lawsuit

Vancouver – IMA Exploration (IMR-V) is offering Aquiline Resources (AQI-V) $100,000 for what it calls the “nuisance value” of Aquiline’s ongoing lawsuit with regard to IMA’s Navidad project in Patagonia, Argentina.

The dispute has been hanging over the stellar results coming from IMA’s drilling at Navidad. With each round of high-grade silver and lead results the stakes are getting higher in what could become a very prolonged legal battle.”We have offered Aquiline a nuisance value sum to put this nonsense behind us,” John Grosso, IMA’s president states. He says the claim has no merit.

Grosso says he is making the offer because IMA would rather focus its efforts on developing Navidad, than waste time and energy on dealing with Aquiline’s opportunistic lawsuit.

In its lawsuit filed in British Columbia last March, Aquiline contends that IMA used confidential information it obtained from Newmont Mining (NEM-N) (the former owner of the Calcatreu property) to stake the Navidad ground 40 km away. IMA allegedly gained access to regional exploration data from Newmont and used it to stake a 100-square km area that encompasses the Navidad Hill discovery.

Aquiline purchased the Calcatreu project after Navidad was discovered in March 2003, and has been advancing it since then as well.

So far Vancouver-based IMA has defined an indicated resource of 268 million oz. silver and 1.1 million tonnes of lead. The resource is contained within 80.8 million tonnes at 103 grams silver and 1.45% lead (at a 50 gram silver cutoff).