The fight over who owns the mining claims at Nevada's Fondaway Canyon gold project has grown to include the estates of a single family, and one corporate defendant has already disclaimed any interest and left the case.
Filings in NV Minerals Corp. v. Getchell Gold Nevada Inc. (No. 3:26-cv-00256, D. Nev.) identify the disputed ground as "the Fisk Claims" and name as defendants Richard E. Fisk and David A. Fisk, along with Richard E. Fisk as personal representative of the estates of George, Amelia, and Wayne Fisk. Getchell Gold Nevada Inc., Canagold Resources Ltd., HCP-RSM LLC and American Innovative Minerals LLC are also named. When Stake & Paper first covered the case in May, the record framed it as a two-party dispute; it is now a contest among a family's estates, a junior explorer, and a handful of related entities.
The claims run back some seven decades. NV Minerals, a Nevada company, contends the Fisk claims lapsed and that it re-staked the ground; the Fisk defendants counterclaim that their title is good and continuous. No court has ruled on who is right.
Canagold out. On July 1, U.S. District Judge Miranda M. Du signed an order dismissing Canagold Resources Ltd., a British Columbia company, from the case without prejudice (ECF No. 53). Canagold had disclaimed "any right, title, or interest" in the claims on June 26, keeping only an indirect royalty position through its ownership of American Innovative Minerals, which asserts a royalty tied to the Fisk Claims. NV Minerals agreed to drop Canagold, each side paying its own costs. The order dismisses Canagold alone; the case continues against everyone else, and the dismissal leaves the door open to refiling.
A recorded cloud. On April 24 the defense filed a notice of lis pendens (ECF No. 21) — a recorded warning that title to the property is in litigation. It attaches to the ground itself, and any lender, partner or buyer running title on Fondaway Canyon will now find it. For an explorer trying to move a project toward development and financing, that is a live encumbrance for as long as the suit runs.
New judge. Five days after signing the Canagold order, Judge Du recused. The docket records the recusal and reassignment on July 6 but gives no reason. The handoff comes early enough to reset the case's pace even though a schedule is already in place.
That schedule is set. A magistrate judge ordered a joint case management report by June 8; the parties filed it, and a scheduling order followed on June 9, opening discovery. Through May and June the defendants, including the Fisk parties, filed answers and counterclaims to amended complaints. The case has moved from pleadings to the part where each side has to prove what it has asserted.
What it has to prove is a paper trail. NV Minerals must show a gap in the Fisk claims' maintenance wide enough to have reopened the ground — and that its own locations were valid when it staked them. The Fisk estates must show an unbroken chain of filings and payments across roughly seventy years and three successions. Nevada's location-monument rules and the federal bar on staking ground that is already claimed both cut against a re-staker whose claims sat on top of valid senior claims at the moment they went in.
Stake & Paper read the court's July 1 order and the public docket for this report. The underlying pleadings — NV Minerals' amended complaint and the defendants' answers and counterclaims, including the one that defines the Fisk Claims — are on PACER and were not purchased; their contents are not characterized here. We will pull the operative filings and report from them when the case reaches a ruling that turns on the substance.
The case is a clean illustration of a problem that outlives the people who staked the ground: title to old claims stands or falls on whether every required filing and payment was made, year after year, and here that record runs through three estates. Reconstructing that history — a claim's full BLM serial-register record, and exposure such as the Assessment Year 2013 filing gap that clouds tens of thousands of pre-1993 claims — is what ChoraQuest's ClaimWatch platform is built to do (claimwatch.io).
Case: NV Minerals Corp. v. Getchell Gold Nevada Inc. et al, No. 3:26-cv-00256 (D. Nev.). Reporting drawn from the public docket and the court's July 1, 2026 order (ECF No. 53).
