Originally published by John McFarland.
The Texas Supreme Court yesterday denied Samson Exploration’s petition for review, ending a long-fought fraud case against Samson that began in 2007. The case was before the Court for the second time; in its first opinion in 2015 the Supreme Court reversed a court of appeals’ judgment throwing out the Hooks’ $21 million judgment against Samson and remanded to the court of appeals for further proceedings. In 2016 the court of appeals affirmed all but $2.6 million of the judgment, leaving in place a judgment for $17.5 million plus interest.
The Hooks claimed damages resulting from Samson’s fraudulent misrepresentation of the location of a well it drilled adjacent to the Hooks’ property. The Houston Court of Appeals’ first opinion in the case threw out the judgment because the Hooks’ claim was barred by limitations. But one Justice on the court made clear that he was joining the majority only because he was bound to do so by the Supreme Court’s opinion in BP v. Marshall:
In that case, the Texas Supreme Court makes clear that no lies on the part of a lessee, however self-serving and egregious, are sufficient to toll limitations, as long as it is technically possible for the lessor to have discovered the lie by resort to the Railroad Commission records. This burden the Court imposes upon lessors is severe. It is now a lessor’s duty to presume that any statement made by its lessee is false and to ransack the esoteric and oft-changing records at the Railroad Commission to discover the truth or falsity of its lessee’s statements. If, as is often the case, these records are technical in nature and require expert review to ferret out the truth, it is the lessor’s job to hire experts out of its own pocket to perform such a review. If a lessor fails to take these steps, then it will have failed in exercising reasonable diligence to protect its mineral interests and, if the lessee’s fraud is successful for longer than the limitations period, the lessor’s claims will be barred by limitations.
Curated by Texas Bar Today. Follow us on Twitter @texasbartoday.
from Texas Bar Today http://ift.tt/2nmL01x
via Abogado Aly Website
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