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Courtesy photo by Shutterstock.com[/caption] The latest lawsuit stemming from a Virginia-based energy company’s $268 million acquisition of two coal mines from Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. has landed in Delaware’s Chancery Court, with the buyer alleging fraud and breach of contract in a 19-count complaint. Seneca Coal Resources this week accused Cliffs and its brass of concealing a range of liabilities associated with the two West Virginia mines as it exited the coal business, saying that it would not have accepted the terms of the 2015 deal had it known about millions of dollars in obligations in legal exposure the company had unwittingly assumed in the transaction. The latest complaint, filed late Monday, asked the court to either approve substantial monetary damages or to remake the contractual terms of the deal, which has since spawned multiple lawsuits in Delaware and Ohio. "In its haste to exit the coal business and extricate itself from continuing liabilities and expenses, however, defendants intentionally induced Seneca into consummating the transaction by making affirmative false and fraudulent misrepresentations about the business and concealing critical information about known liabilities from Seneca," the company's White & Case attorneys said in a 63-page filing. Specifically, Seneca targeted a lawsuit over "catastrophic" flooding at one of the mines in 2014. The case was voluntarily dismissed in 2015, but according to the company, Cliffs failed to tell Seneca that the suit would likely be refiled after the sale was finalized. Seneca said it has already spent $2 million defending the action in West Virginia and faces up to $600 million in potential liability going forward. The company also cited $1.5 million worth of invoices and $10 million in workers' compensation liability that it was unaware of at the time of the deal, among other things. Seneca's complaint came two months after a federal judge in Delaware dismissed Cliffs' breach-of-contract lawsuit over the same deal, and it promised to open a fresh round of fighting between the two firms. Cliffs, now known as Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., had originally sued Seneca in Ohio federal court under federal diversity jurisdiction, accusing Seneca of working with two other firms to defraud Cliffs and avoid paying money it owed pursuant to a unit-purchase agreement the companies had signed a year earlier. Seneca later won its motion to transfer the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, where it moved to dismiss the case in March for lack of diversity jurisdiction. In an attempt to salvage the case, Cliffs tried to amend the lawsuit to include a claim for violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. But U.S. District Judge Gerald Austin McHugh Jr. said Cliffs had already “effectively conceded the point” that the existence of Ohio companies on both sides of the litigation had extinguished the court’s lack of power to act. Cliffs fired back in May with a RICO and breach-of-contract suit in the Superior Court's Complex Commercial Litigation Division, where the case is currently pending before Judge Paul R. Wallace. Seneca said its Chancery Court complaint largely "mirrors" counterclaims it made in response Cliffs' lawsuit and that it reserved the right to seek consolidation of the two cases. The matter has been assigned to Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III. A spokeswoman for Cliffs did not respond Thursday to a call seeking comment on the filing. Seneca is represented by Craig H. Averch, Ronald K. Gorsich and Mark E. Gustafson of White & Case in Los Angeles and Joshua Berman, from the firm's New York office. Christopher Viceconte of Gibbons is listed as Delaware counsel in the case. An online docket-tracking service did not list Cliffs' attorneys in the Chancery Court case, which is captioned Seneca Coal Resources v. Cleveland-Cliffs.