Northern California SME Section

Hi all,

Thanks for everyone that came to the last section meeting and watched our presentation on Walter W. Johnson dredges.  We had a great time with the presentation and ensuing discussion.

As I mentioned at the end, we are currently in litigation over a patented mining claim in Nome that we own a 50% interest in, and was mined for several years by lessees of the owner of the 50% interest, without our permission or knowledge, and whom kept 100% of the gold.  The trial is scheduled for 2 weeks at the end of September 2026 in the Nome courthouse, but we hope to reach a reasonable settlement prior to that.   We are currently looking for one or two experts to help us with analzying data related to resource and drill data, mine planning  and operations, production and assay reports, financial data (royalty reports, expenses, tax data),  mapping, aerial imagery, GIS data and volumetrics, and just general industry standards around record keeping and documentation.  

I've been trying to handle all of this myself, but we are getting to a point where we may need to do depositions, and having an actual expert anwer questions would give a lot more credence than myself doing it.  It shouldn't be too many hours of commitment, no more than a few hours a month.  All depositions and testimony can be given remotely over video.  

Thus far, we haven't needed to do any depositions, and I am hoping we will come to a reasonable settlement before the trial starts.  At this point, I just need someone more knowledgable than myself to bounce some ideas off.  Here is a illustrative recent example of where we could use help:  There is a disagreement how much gold the outfit ("Dry Gulch, LLC") mined from our claim versus an adjoining claim (that we have no interest in) in the year 2022.  They claimed to have moved off of our claim on July 24, 2022,  and gave us cleanup records that purport to show this.  They never segregated the gold, even when mining on the edges and corners of the claim boundaries, and the "MOVED TO A NEW AREA" written on the cleanup records looks like it was written after the fact for our benefit only.  There is a 2 unexplained 2 week gap in the cleanup records a month later.  This always made me suspicious so I finally ordered a $1,000 worth of 15cm satellite imagery that covered those dates, and low and behold none of the vehicles or wash plant moved off the claim until a month after they claimed to have moved.  (https://johnsondevco.com/maps/bearcub/index.html)   We've just given it to Dry Gulch's attorney and he wants us to explain what we think we see.  The problem is is that he hates me and this will be much more effective if delivered by a neutral expert :)  It would not require a lot of someone's time, maybe just 15 minutes looking at the work I did to see if they agree, and 15 minutes on the phone.

If you know anyone who might be interested, please let me know.  We are willing to pay reasonable expert-witness level hourly rates.

Thanks all!

sky