WHEELING – A federal judge has given the defendants in a natural gas royalties case a little more time to fulfill discovery requests after the plaintiffs changed the proposed class four years after filing the original complaint.
In a July 27 order, U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey shot down a request from plaintiffs William D. Glover, Linda K. Glover, Richard A. Glover, Christy L. Glover and Goshorn Ridge LLC against EQT Corporation and related companies. The plaintiffs had requested sanctions in a July 11 instant motion against the company for allegedly failing to obey a discovery order issued April 25 by Bailey.
That order compelled EQT to respond more fully to the plaintiffs’ discovery requests. They maintained EQT had not filed supplemental answers to interrogatories as directed by Bailey’s order and providing additional information, particularly lease accounting information to help determine whether each royalty owner in the potential class action was paid pursuant to a class lease and is entitled to damages.
EQT, however, said the plaintiffs “intentionally omitted material facts from their motion to mislead the court.”
“EQT states plaintiffs materially changed the proposed class three weeks before the end of discovery and after the court’s discovery order,” Bailey’s order states. “Plaintiffs filed their amended complaint June 9, 2023, excluding 11 purported categories of leases from the alleged class.”
EQT also says its legal team still is working to identify the lease subjects to each of the 11 new exclusions and will be able to produce the required documents when that process is complete.
“It appears to this court that EQT is participating in this litigation and working on complying with the order of this court,” Bailey wrote. “Plaintiffs filed an Amended Complaint on June 9, 2023, which materially changed the proposed class definition, for the first time, excluding 11 purported categories of leases from the alleged class. These changes to the proposed class created a substantial amount of work for EQT to narrow the putative class and datasets.
“This court is aware that close of discovery was June 29, 2023. However, plaintiffs’ changes to the proposed class four years into this litigation and less than three weeks before the close of discovery made additional, albeit necessary, work for EQT to perform.
“This court refuses to sanction EQT when plaintiffs’ excluded 11 purported categories in their amended complaint, and EQT is currently working to complete the process and datasets.”
In denying the plaintiffs’ request, Bailey gave EQT until August 24 to produce the documents required in his April 25 order. Bailey notes that deadline is one week before the scheduled class certification hearing.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs claim EQT breached contracts by shorting them on payments for natural gas royalties and by failing to make timely royalty payments. They also say the company breached its fiduciary duties and misrepresented to them that they were being fairly compensated.
The company says it paid the owners for the value of natural gas liquids based on the Btu content of the gas until January 2021 and is not obligated to pay more just because it goes on to process the liquids and sell them as hydrocarbons.
The company also said the Glovers did not honor their obligation to bring possible contract violations to the company before filing a lawsuit, which it says was required by an agreement.
The plaintiffs are being represented by Robert J. Fitzsimmons, Mark Colantonio and Donald M. Kresen of Fitzsimmons Law Firm in Wheeling, Eric M. Gordon of Berry Kessler Crutchfield Taylor & Gordon in Moundsville, Roger L. Cutright and Andrew R. Cutright of Cutright Law in Morgantown and Marvin W. Masters of The Masters Law Firm in Charleston.
The defendants are being represented by Lauren Varnado and David Dehoney of Michelman & Robinson and Chesea Heinz, Jennifer Hicks, Mark Dausch, Timothy Miller and Tiffany Arbaugh of Babst Calland.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia case number 5:19-cv-223
