Gina Rinehart has been forced to share her riches. But will she fight on or end the family feud?

Gina Rinehart with her son, John Hancock, in 2002 before the pair fell out over his inheritance. Photograph: Andy Tyndall/AAP

Gina Rinehart does not like to lose.

Engaged in bitter legal battles for most of the past 35 years, Australia’s richest person has shown her propensity to fight tooth and nail to retain control of her family’s iron ore empire – and the riches that flow from it.

Even as her own children were due to receive their inheritance from their grandfather Lang Hancock almost 20 years ago, Rinehart sought to block them in an ugly legal dispute that showed the lengths she was prepared to go to retain control.

But as rain drizzled down on Perth’s central business district on Wednesday, Justice Jennifer Smith handed down a judgment that will force Rinehart to share. Not just hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty payments pocketed by Hancock Prospecting, but also some of the credit for the making of the Pilbara iron ore industry.

The atmosphere in the courtroom was tense as dozens of sharply dressed lawyers and the Western Australian media pack awaited a verdict that came almost two decades after the Wright family first launched a claim against Hancock Prospecting for its share of royalties from the Hope Downs mine complex.

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In a dry and cursory judgment, Smith read out a short summary of her findings, drawn from a 1,655 page judgment on the 51-day trial that saw 4,000 documents submitted in argument.

In the front row of the courtroom, which had to be revamped to manage the trial in 2023, sat three of Rinehart’s most loyal lieutenants, Sanjiv Manchanda, Garry Korte and Jay Newby.

In a sign of the case’s complexity – and the divisions within Rinehart’s family – the five-member clan had four separate legal representatives joining to hear the verdict via video link.

At the crux of the dispute was whether an agreement between Peter Wright and Lang Hancock signed in the 1980s entitled the family to a share of the royalties flowing from the lucrative Rio Tinto – Hancock Prospecting joint venture project. Smith upheld this claim.

Wright Prospecting was unsuccessful in claiming an equity stake in other Hancock projects, but the verdict on royalties means Hancock and Rio Tinto are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to the family of Peter Wright, going back to when the mine first began operating in 2007.

The final amount will be determined in yet another trial and the decision may yet be appealed.

The verdict is a blow to Rinehart and Hancock Prospecting who had dismissed the Wright claim as baseless, spending tens of millions of dollars and countless court hours fighting them.

In another loss, Hancock will also be forced to pay a smaller share of royalties to the family business of the late Don Rhodes, another of the Pilbara pioneers who was instrumental in helping Hancock open up vast swathes of WA for development.

Following the verdict, Matt Keady, the current chief executive of DFD Rhodes, described the result as a win, saying Hancock Prospecting and Rinehart had been “formidable opponents”.

“We are very, very pleased that the court has recognised the contribution of Don Rhodes to the iron ore industry,” Keady said.

Within minutes of the verdict, Hancock Prospecting and Wright Prospecting were both claiming victory. As Smith noted when discussing costs, both parties had arguably “won half of its case and lost half of its case”.

Hancock Prospecting was happy that Wright’s ownership claims had been dismissed, but reserved most of its glee for the court’s rejection of what it called the “abusive claims of serious wrongdoing” made against Rinehart by her eldest children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart.

Smith found that their claim to a share of the Hope Downs royalty stream “failed at the first hurdle”, blaming the “fraudulent” actions of Lang Hancock for shifting assets away from Hancock Prospecting in the first place and clearing Rinehart of the “egregious” fraud her children had alleged.

Smith handballed most of the family dispute back to a separate confidential arbitration that is still to determine how billions of dollars of Hancock Prospecting shares are divided between the family.

This matter is likely to be more consequential to Rinehart’s standing as Australia’s richest person given it may yet substantially reduce her stake in the company.

Following the ruling, John Hancock took a conciliatory tone, asking his mother – with whom he has been feuding for more than two decades – for reconciliation.

The Wright-Hancock trial has exposed the Hancock dynasty to be a family racked by intergenerational infighting, with no shortage of vicious claims made between the parties.

John Hancock’s challenge to his mother to bury the hatchet and return to a level of familial harmony has given Rinehart the ultimate challenge.

Does she keep fighting to win? Or does she agree to share?

If the family matriarch accepts the invitation from her son, then Wednesday’s judgment will be truly consequential – it will have forced a backdown from a woman who is notoriously unyielding.

And while billions of dollars may yet be at stake, a decision from Rinehart to stop fighting – well, that would be priceless.