Fearless.....

 I agree with you that Barrick is not the "partner" that Novagold would choose if they had a choice but they did not have a choice.  Novagold was working with a very poorly worded agreement that they made with Placer Dome...I can remember going over this agreement with the Nova IR guy when they made the deal with Placer saying that it looked like a problem in the making because of its ambiguous nature....one of the main reasons I got out of Novagold way back after a nice run.

 I agree Nova gave 20% away but they did that when they made the bad agreement with Placer long ago....I think they should be happy to get out of the litigation.

Nova in one sense is still a loser though as they have to deal with the SOB's at Barrick throughout the development of Donlin.