Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy lawyers have decided to drop their request to move trials over claims it cheated thousands of landowners out of royalties. Attorneys had asked Tarrant County judge Dana Womack to move the first ten trials from Fort Worth to Houston, blaming Fort Worth attorney Dan McDonald for a so-called media blitz that they contended only poisoned the jury pool.
Now, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Chesapeake has reconsidered and dropped its request. The decision came this week at a hearing in Tarrant county court where the attorneys also asked Judge Womack to seal more than 30 documents because they reportedly contained trade secrets. The judge took the request of sealing documents under consideration and did not issue a ruling.
More than 22,000 plaintiffs are represented by attorney McDonald who has sued Chesapeake more than 400 times. The suits accuse the company of wrongly subtracting post-production costs from royalty checks through sham sales to affiliated companies. Chesapeake allegedly shipped gas to market through its affiliated companies then deducted the costs on the royalty checks.
The first trial is set to begin April 25th. But a trial is scheduled to be held every month in a separate Tarrant county court until January 2017.
The Star-Telegram reported that Chesapeake stipulated that eight of the cases out of Johnson County remain in Tarrant county but it also reserved the right to move all of the trials to Houston if a jury cannot be chosen.
An attorney for Chesapeake declined comment after this week’s hearing.
