Legal Definitions - highgrade

The term highgrade refers to two distinct but related practices, primarily within the context of mining or resource extraction:

• 1. To steal valuable material: This involves the illicit taking of rich ore, precious minerals, or other valuable resources, often by an individual who has access to the source, such as an employee in a mine or processing facility. The act is characterized by stealth and personal gain.

• 2. To selectively extract valuable material: This describes the practice of focusing extraction efforts exclusively on the most valuable or highest-grade portions of a resource deposit, often leaving behind lower-grade but still potentially useful material. This can be a strategic decision, but it can also be done to maximize immediate profit or minimize effort, sometimes against broader resource management principles.

Here are some examples to illustrate these meanings:

• Example 1 (Theft): A worker at a diamond sorting facility discovers a small, exceptionally clear diamond among the rough stones. Instead of placing it into the company's designated collection for high-value gems, the worker discreetly pockets it, intending to sell it on the black market for personal profit. This action is an instance of highgrading because the worker is stealing a valuable piece of the company's resource.

• Example 2 (Theft/Misappropriation): An employee responsible for maintaining machinery in a gold refinery notices that small quantities of gold dust accumulate in the filters and crevices of the equipment. Rather than following company protocol to collect and return this material to the refining process, the employee regularly scrapes it into a personal container to accumulate enough for private sale. This constitutes highgrading, as the employee is illicitly taking valuable material that belongs to the employer.

• Example 3 (Selective Extraction): A small mining company, operating on a lease that contains both rich, easily accessible veins of silver and much larger, lower-grade deposits of the same mineral, decides to focus all its efforts solely on extracting the high-concentration silver veins. They leave the extensive lower-grade deposits untouched because processing them would require significant additional investment in specialized equipment and a longer operational timeline, which the company is not prepared to undertake. This is an example of highgrading because the company is selectively extracting only the most valuable portions of the resource, prioritizing immediate returns over a more comprehensive extraction of the entire deposit.