Tucson-based Asarco LLC wants the Rosemont Ranch property back, even though another company owns it and is trying to turn it into a mine.

Asarco argues in a lawsuit filed this month as part of its bankruptcy that it was defenseless when an agent for local businessman Yoram Levy came offering a low price for the property in 2004.

"Believing that a quick sale to Levy could raise much needed cash to satisfy creditors' demands, Asarco's management accepted Levy's fire sale price quickly and without making a counteroffer or engaging in any negotiations whatsoever," Asarco says in its suit.

Asarco sold the property, about 30 miles southeast of Tucson in the Santa Rita Mountains, to a company owned by Levy for $4.2 million — even though at the time the property, including its copper deposits, was worth $400 million, the suit says.

Levy, in turn, offered the property to Pima County as open space for $11.5 million. After the county turned Levy down, he sold the property to Augusta Resource Corp., of Vancouver, B.C., for $20.8 million.

Augusta is trying to overcome regulatory hurdles as well as environmental and political objections to developing an open-pit copper mine on the property.

Asarco's suit is one of several it filed earlier this month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Corpus Christi trying to reverse moves its parent company, Grupo Mexico, made between 2000 and 2006, which the company described as "a sustained period of financial distress."

Augusta CEO Gil Clausen called the lawsuit "completely unfounded" in a written statement.

"We bought the property from real estate developers in good faith after the seller offered to first sell to Pima County in a public process," Clausen said. "We see no legitimate basis for Asarco to show up years later and raise claims regarding the property, after a subsequent fair market transaction and after Augusta has substantially advanced the property by devoting untold time and financial resources."