On the eve of a scheduled federal trial, events unfolded that led to a tentative settlement in a case about oil leases that involved three big Texas firms: Baker Botts, Susman Godfrey, and Gruber Hurst Johansen & Hail. On Jan. 7, U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means of the Northern District of Texas in Dallas issued an order in MC Asset Recovery LLC v. Castex Energy Inc., et al, denying the corporate defendants’ attempt to quash a subpoena aimed at getting on the stand lawyers from Baker Botts who had provided counsel to those defendants for the transactions involved in MC Asset Recovery. On Jan. 9, according to the PACER record of the case, at a hearing before Means, both sides read and agreed to the terms of their proposed settlement. Court approval of that settlement is still pending. G. Michael Gruber, a partner in Dallas’ Gruber Hurst, who represented the plaintiffs, declines comment, citing, through his assistant, the terms of the settlement that bar his public comment on it. Neal Manne, a partner in Susman Godfrey, who represents the defendants, writes in an email: “The parties agreed that there would be no comment, other than that it was an amicable settlement.”
Farming Firm
How does a Texas firm come to own a cattle, watermelon and hay operation? It’s a long story, involving two property disputes. Toufic Nicolas explains that, in the 1980s, his firm then called Nicolas, Morris & Barrow represented clients who owned 16 acres in Caldwell County. An adjacent neighbor claimed that his land extended about eight acres into the client’s property. The boundary dispute wound up in court, and the firm’s clients won a judgment. During the appellate process, the neighbor gave up. “He came and said, ‘I don’t want to bother with that tract,’” Nicolas explains. “He transferred it to the firm.” For more than 30 years, Nicolas says the firm which changed names to Nicolas & Morris and then to Nicolas, Morris, Gilbreath & Smith owned the land, paid the taxes, and leased the tract to a family that ran the cattle-watermelon operation. When the firm recently wanted to sell the land, it needed to clear the title. “You have to serve whoever is a record owner,” he explains. Nicolas says a family named Byrd “had owned the property back in the 1900s or whatever.” Alvin W. Byrd, Jr. “one of Byrd’s forebears” filed an answer challenging the firm’s claim of title, according to a Jan. 9 opinion by the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin. The 3rd Court dismissed the challenge, affirming a trial court judgment declaring the firm the owner, according to the opinion in Alvin W. Byrd, Jr. v. Nicolas & Morris. The firm produced deeds between “the Byrd forebears” and a string of subsequent owners, ending with the firm, the opinion says. This will be the final chapter in the firm-farm story: Nicolas says the firm sold the land last year. A telephone number for Byrd could not be located.
