COEUR d'ALENE - A shareholder has filed a lawsuit in 1st District Court in Coeur d'Alene on behalf of Hecla Mining Co. against senior officers of the company and members of its board of directors.

The lawsuit says the officers and board members did "substantial harm" to the Coeur d'Alene-based company by issuing materially false and misleading statements about Hecla's operations, projected silver production and financial results. It also accuses them of wasting corporate assets and unjustly enriching themselves.

The lawsuit, filed Friday, names Jeff Murguia as the plaintiff shareholder. His attorney, Marc Henzel, in Merion Station, Pa., declined to comment on Tuesday.

James Sabala, Hecla's senior vice president and chief financial officer, said several of these lawsuits have been filed as expected on the coattails of a larger suit.

Last month, Hecla shareholders sued the company in U.S. District Court in Idaho for stock losses.

The Murguia suit said statements made by company officers in public statements caused the company's stock price to trade at "artificially inflated prices," reaching a high of $11.34 a share on Dec. 29, 2010.

Then Hecla had a rough year last year with three major accidents at the Lucky Friday silver mine in Mullan. The mine is closed while Hecla cleans the main access shaft at Lucky Friday to remove accumulated sand and cement from the walls of the shaft for safety reasons. It's not expected to re-open until next year.

The closure prompted Hecla to reduce its estimated silver production for 2012 from more than 9 million ounces to about 7 million ounces, all from its remaining Green's Creek mine operation in Alaska.

Hecla's share price dropped after the closure of Lucky Friday.

The lawsuit said Hecla officers allowed the company to "conceal harsh truths from the investing public."

It said the company lacked a sufficient basis for overly optimistic and positive statements made publicly.

Officers should have disclosed the company wasn't in safety compliance with regulations at Lucky Friday, the suit said. And the company allowed the sand and gravel material to build up in the shaft, creating a safety hazard.

The material leaked from pipes running along the walls of the shaft, hardened to the walls, and chunks could break off and fall and injure miners or equipment. Federal regulators want the material cleaned before the shaft is re-opened.

The lawsuit criticized a December announcement by Hecla that production could resume in February, which turned out to be overly optimistic. Shortly after the announcement, Hecla revealed it would be a year before production resumed.

Lucky Friday has been shuttered since mid-December, when a rock burst injured seven miners. Two miners died in two other unrelated accidents in 2011 at the mine.

Federal inspectors said company safety failures led to the death of one of the miners.

Among other officers, the lawsuit names Hecla CEO and President Phil Baker, Sabala, and George Nethercutt, who is chairman of the compensation committee and a member of the corporate governance committee.

The suit said Baker reaped nearly $2 million in insider-trading proceeds, by selling 246,000 shares of his Hecla stock at "artificially inflated prices" in a transaction in November 2010.

It said Sabala reaped nearly $1.1 million in similar proceeds, selling more than 124,000 shares of Hecla stock in transactions in November 2010 and March 2011.