Two years, 30 hearings, 9 million seized documents and dozens of affidavits later, one of the dirtiest and most personal legal battles – between billionaire Andrew Forrest and one of his former close friends Michael Masterman – is now moot.

It was settled with a whimper on Wednesday with no admissions, no concessions and neither responsible for anything other than their respective legal costs.

Former Fortescue employees executives Bart Kolodziejczyk and Michael Masterman.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

But given the tens of millions of dollars this case would have generated in legal expenses, the entire episode has turned out to be an example of a big company using a sledgehammer to swat a fly, an exercise that reeks of excess testosterone, too much ego and motivated partly by personal feelings.

Forrest’s Fortescue had claimed Masterman’s start-up, Element Zero, engaged in what was essentially corporate espionage – with the green tech start-up allegedly stealing a recipe to produce green iron that the trio developed while on Fortescue company’s time

Masterman and his two colleagues who founded Element Zero – Bart Kolodziejczyk and Bjorn Winther-Jensen – all used to work at Fortescue. The........

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