Texas Lawyer Seeks Plaintiffs in Litigation Against Chesapeake Energy
Environment & Energy Publishing tells the story of a Texas-based law firm has spent the past year rounding up potential clients in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania for mass litigation against Chesapeake for shorting royalty owners on payments.
The Oklahoma City-based natural gas producer has generally maintained that its royalty calculations are perfectly legal and that royalty owners have just misunderstood how their contracts work, E&E Publishing says. Nevertheless, royalty owners have sued the company in every state it has operations, resulting in a mixed bag of wins, losses and settlements.
“The royalty owners and their attorneys are adamant that Chesapeake is shortchanging them. In a recent Pennsylvania lawsuit, attorneys even accuse the company of racketeering — raising much-needed cash by selling assets to Access Midstream Partners LP and agreeing to pay the company high prices to move natural gas, then passing those costs to the royalty owners,” E&E Publishing reports.
