Adani has failed in an attempt to make conservationists pay legal costs estimated at more than $1m from a court challenge against its Carmichael coal project.

The ruling by Queensland land court president Carmel MacDonald against a costs application by the Indian mining group is likely to stiffen the resolve of landholders and environmental groups who feared being lumbered with prohibitive legal bills after challenging other mining projects.

MacDonald rejected arguments by the environmental group Coast and Country against the state government’s decision to license Adani’s planned $16bn project in the Galilee Basin after four weeks of hearings last year. But after Adani applied for costs she ruled on Wednesday that the land court did not have “jurisdiction to award costs in administrative inquiries such as these”.

Sean Ryan, the principal solicitor of Environmental Defenders Office Queensland, which ran the case for Coast and Country, said this sent “a clear message that well-resourced companies can no longer use threats of costs to intimidate community groups into remaining silent with their objections”.

Ryan said it came as a “huge relief” to landholders who, with EDO backing, have also launched a challenge to the contentious Acland coalmine expansion on the Darling Downs.

Adani’s legal costs in the case were not defined. But one solicitor with experience running commercial cases said it was likely to have cost the company more than $1m.

This was in view of the usual barrister costs of $8,000 a day over four weeks of court hearings and four weeks of preparation, as well as eight weeks for the rest of the legal team to prepare the case and work with expert witnesses.

Coast and Country’s challenge was among the cases that prompted federal attorney general George Brandis last year to flag moves to curtail community objection rights to mining projects amid what he branded “vigilante litigation” by green groups.

The former prime minister Tony Abbott accused green groups of using the courts to “sabotage” Adani’s mining ambitions.

Ryan defended the case as a “prime example” of a community challenge leading to more environmental protections. He said the case also exposed Adani’s exaggeration of job benefits from the mine, with net jobs “closer to 1,400 than the 10,000 the company stated”.

Other revelations included the prospect of “serious damage to the continued survival of the largest remaining colonies of the endangered flack-throated finch”, he said.

Ryan said it also drew attention to a “concerning lack of direct investigation” into impacts on the million-year-old Doongmabulla springs complex, which was found to have “exceptional ecological significance”.

“Community objections to mining are a normal part of the administrative assessment process; important to both the public interest and the protection of the environment,” Ryan said.

“Everybody has a right to protect their family, their home and their environment. We all should be able to exercise this right without the fear of paying for the other side’s legal costs from the big end of town.”

An Adani spokesman said the company was determined to “continue to oppose politically-motivated activist legal challenges that are seeking to further delay what has already been a six year approval process”.

He said the land court in its ruling “made no findings on the merits of the application itself”.



“It is important to note that the substantive decision of the land court last year clearly found in favour of Adani, recommending the grant of the environmental authority and mining lease for the mine at Carmichael to proceed, subject to conditions, in addition to the strict and rigorous science-based state and federal environmental approvals,” he said.

