Chesapeake Agrees to Increased Payout in Settlement of Class Action Royalties Lawsuit
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Chesapeake Appalachia LLC has agreed to increase payment from $7.5 million to $11 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with natural gas leaseholders who claimed the company wrongly charged them post production fees, according to court documents.
The proposed settlement would resolve a more than year-long dispute among law firms over the handling of the case that derailed the original settlement reached in August 2013 with Demchak Partners, the lead plaintiffs in the case.
The proposal, filed Dec. 18 in federal court, increases the amount of up-front money thousands of Pennsylvania leaseholders would receive and contains other financial benefits over the original settlement, according to the proposal filed by attorney Michelle O’Brien of The O’Brien Law Group in Moosic and several other law firms.
Jackie Root, the owner of a landowner consulting firm and president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO), said she still has concerns over the settlement.
“Materially there is not much change in the settlement. They are getting a little more than they would have, but they are giving up an awful lot in this,” she said.Read the entire article here.
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