The big developments last week, which should have also helped boost BMW and Mercedes sales to solicitors, included:

• the latest legal twist in Queensland’s Alpha project
• Rio Tinto hitting a fresh hurdle with its plans to expand the Warkworth mine in New South Wales
• Whitehaven being forced to consider fresh legal action to defend its right to develop the Maules Creek mine in NSW.

If those events were not enough to keep a coal watcher busy there was the even more interesting development in the proposed break-up of BHP Billiton and the uncertainty over where some of its coal assets will end up – with the parent, or in the bad-company spin-off.

On the legal front the Alpha situation seems most likely to end amicably with a Land Court judge offering a choice of decisions for the Queensland Mines Minister, either outright rejection or an agreement on a number of conditions.

Given Queensland’s pro-business government it seems to Hogsback the “conditions route” will be chosen.

None of the Alpha obligations seeming to be particularly onerous or expensive – though the fact they came as part of a legal process rather than a business-to-government negotiation speaks loudly about the mess into which mining approvals in Australia have fallen.

Among the requirements recommended by the Land Court in a 149 page decision, and isn’t the sheer length of the judgement another warning about the approvals process, are electronic water monitoring systems to please local farmers.

GVK Hancock, the company part-owned by India’s GVK group and Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, reckons that it will be able to “sort through” the Land Court recommendations and get on with the development of Alpha.

The farmers reckon not, and while that sounds like bluster, after extracting a 149-page judgement that included some things in their favour, there is the sheer length of the document, which strikes The Hog as being a “road map” for future litigation – or more work for lawyers.

Rio Tinto’s never ending battle to expand the Warkworth mine took a legal step back and one step forward last week.

The backwards steps was a loss in the NSW Court of Appeal against an earlier order in the Land and Environment Court that found that the environmental impact of Warkworth’s expansion outweighed the project’s economic benefits.

The next step, according to a Rio Tinto spokesman, is to restart the legal meter by submitting a fresh mine expansion proposal that sweetens the offer to residents of the tiny hamlet of Bulga who have objected to the mine’s life being extended.

Included in the next proposal will be an offer to set aside 1800 hectares of woodland for a national park and $9 million for woodland employment opportunities.

Most people with open minds would see the revised Rio Tinto offer as being an attractive trade-off but The Hog suspects it will simply infuriate the anti-coal crusaders who will see the cash and land gesture as an attempt to compromise their dark green environmental credentials.

If that is their reaction then it will be back to court, a step that could precede the closure of Warkworth, which can only stay in production until the end of next year without expansion approval being granted.

Protestors are well aware of the timetable (or should that be time bomb) ticking away at Warkworth. If they can drag the project back into court it will be as good as a death sentence for the mine.

The Whitehaven situation at Maules Creek, which resulted in the arrest of 60 protestors last week, was what might be called business-as-usual given the past record of events at the mine near Gunnedah in north-west NSW.

No new issues were raised by the protestors who are simply opposed to the coal industry on idealistic grounds but mass arrests are a fresh legal twist as will be their potential mass appearance in the Narrabri local court on April 29 – four days after Anzac Day which should earn added publicity for the highest profile (and oldest) protestor, 92 year-old war veteran, Bill Ryan.

On their own each legal event is interesting. Taken together, it’s hard to remember when so much was being said about coal in so many different court rooms – which is why Australia’s lawyers (if no-one else) are learning to love coal.