Rusty Hardin welcomes any opportunity to return to Terry County in West Texas, where his client Smith Energy won an $8.5 million final judgment based on a jury finding that a landman the company had hired committed fraud and theft through their joint oil and gas ventures.

For Hardin, founding partner of Rusty Hardin & Associates in Houston, the outcome ranks as particularly pleasing because before trial he had worried the jury might be affronted by the wealth of the two men in the court battle.