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Dominion Resources paid up to $50 million to 25,000 oil and gas owners to resolve a lawsuit alleging that the company cheated them out of natural gas royalties.
The settlement got minimal press coverage compared to a $404 million jury verdict against Chesapeake Energy Corp. in January 2007 in Roane County.
Now, a federal court has refused to seal details about the settlement. Lawyers wrapping up a $50 million settlement of litigation against Dominion Resources decided too late that they needed to hide the reasons why some lease holders didn't participate.
On October 22, claims administrator Arnett & Foster asked US District Judge Joseph Goodwin to seal a document it filed as public record.
The document contained unredacted information that plaintiffs' counsel felt should be sealed by the court.
The court declined to seal the information.
See
Judge not sealing document in oil, gas royalties case by Steve Korris, WV Record, Kanawha Bureau.
THE ROYALTY BATTLE
There was a similar class-action royalty case against Equitable Resources.
The cases focused on a dispute over whether gas drillers could deduct production costs before calculating royalty payments to land and mineral owners.
The lawsuits said that oil and gas companies schemed to intentionally mislead mineral owners into believing that they were being paid all of the royalties due them.
In the Chesapeake case, Roane County jurors awarded a class of more than 10,000 gas well owners $134 million in compensatory damages and $270 million in punitive damages.
That verdict prompted an outcry from the oil and gas industry, and led Gov. Joe Manchin to try unsuccessfully to rewrite state gas royalty laws. The West Virginia Supreme Court declined to hear Chesapeake's appeal.
The lawsuit against Dominion was originally filed in Roane Circuit Court, but moved to U.S. District Court in Charleston in August 2006.
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