This from late last night:
U.S. jury rejects fraud charges against Exxon
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, March 27 (Reuter) - A U.S. District Court jury Thursday rejected claims by independent investors that Exxon Corp cheated them out of proper compensation for leases in the Point McIntyre oil field on Alaska's North Slope.
The nine-member jury deliberated just two hours before rejecting the fraud claims filed by oil-industry gadfly Chuck Hamel and his partners.
"We're very pleased by the jury's verdict, which confirms that there was no merit to the plaintiffs' charges," Exxon spokesman Bob Davis said after the unanimous decision was read.
It confirms that Exxon acted "fairly and honestly" with regard to the 1989 purchase of the Point McIntyre leases, said Davis, who was in the courtroom hear the jury's decision.
The plaintiffs' reaction was terse. "We're disappointed, but the verdict's in," Hamel attorney Mona Lyons said of the outcome.
She declined to specify the amount of money the plaintiffs had been seeking in compensation. Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland struck down the plaintiffs' request for punitive damages in the case.
Hamel and his partners had alleged that Exxon paid less than half the actual value when the corporate bought the independently owned Point McIntyre leases. The plaintiffs argued that Exxon misled them into believing that their piece of the Point McIntyre field was unproductive.
An expert witness for the plaintiffs testified that the field section bought by Exxon was worth nearly $12 million, not the $5.5 million that Exxon paid.
Exxon argued that no data existed at the time of the sale to prove the partners' leases held commercial quantities of oil. But Exxon also denied that it had positively dismissed the partners' leases as unproductive.
In a court motion filed Wednesday, Exxon termed such conclusions "irrational inferences" that "cannot be actionable as affirmative misrepresentations."
The trial, lasting nearly two weeks, resulted from a lawsuit filed in 1990 by Hamel and partners Cliff Burglin and Tom Miklautsch of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Exxon had been cleared in 1992 by a federal judge in Texas on claims it violated a partnership agreement with the three men.
Point McIntyre was discovered in 1988 by Atlantic Richfield Co unit Arco Alaska Inc. Production began in 1993.
Ownership of the Arco-operated field is divided between Exxon, British Petroleum BP.L unit BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. and Arco. The field, the fourth largest on the North Slope, is expected to produce about 400 million barrels over its lifetime.
Hamel is a former oil broker from Alexandria, Virginia, who emerged in recent years as an industry critic and patron of whistleblowers.
After the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, he was the target of a controversial spying operation organized by trans-Alaska pipeline operator Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. He and other targets settled an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit with Alyeska in 1993.
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