Rice Brothers Sue EQT to Prevent Proxy Manipulation
In addition to EQT’s 1Q19 update yesterday, Toby and Derek Rice filed a lawsuit against EQT, alleging the company is trying to confuse shareholders by requiring some of board candidates the Rice boys are proposing get commingled with EQT’s own slate of candidates. The Rice boys say the lawsuit is aimed at “preventing EQT from manipulating shareholder election.” The Rices want to elect their own board, tossing out the existing board and following that, tossing out EQT’s current senior management.
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Yesterday the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) voted 5-0 to deny Sunoco Logistics Partners permission to restart construction of Mariner East 2 pipeline in West Whiteland Township in Chester County. Why? Because construction at that location (Shoen Road), along with three other locations, is currently under review in Commonwealth Court. In other words, for the time being (until the court rules), the PUC’s hands are tied.
Andrew Cuomo, the man-child who governs New York State like it’s a third world, tinpot dictatorship (it’s rapidly becoming as poor as a third world country), says NY is going to sue President Trump over his recently signed Executive Order that will make it harder for states like NY to reject pipelines for purely political reasons (see 
In March a group of Pennsylvania landowners from Lancaster County asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which they say they’ve been screwed over by Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, that the pipeline should not have had the right to use eminent domain to build the pipeline before the matter of compensation was fully adjudicated (see 
We continue to be disturbed by the double standard and (we maintain) lawless behavior of the Attorneys General in both New York State and Massachusetts. Both AGs have colluded with Big Green groups in a scheme to shake down ExxonMobil, and both are doing their best to cover up their collusion. We told you in 2016 of the AGs’ refusal to comply with subpoena issued by Congress for copies of their communication records (see 
This stuff continues to make us angry. In March we told you that MacAllister Machinery Co. Inc. of Michigan used lawyers to serve landowners in Lancaster County, PA with “mechanic’s liens” making the landowners liable to pay money to MacAllister for work done on the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project (see 
West Virginia’s Republican Attorney General, Mac Warner, for some reason is suing the Shale Energy Alliance (SEA), claiming the group (a non-profit) is withholding a list of donor’s names that should be made publicly available. SEA engaged in “electioneering” according to Warner’s office, by paying for ads supporting certain candidates in the 2018 election. Yet Warner’s office isn’t going after non-profit Big Green groups that are doing the same thing. Why not?
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. Groups like the Sierra Club are jobs killers. When was the last time you heard about a Big Green group actually creating new jobs–except for paying a few protesters? They NEVER create jobs, they ALWAYS kill jobs via lawsuits. And so it is with lawsuits that have stopped work on the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from West Virginia to North Carolina. Lawsuits launched by Big Green groups against ACP have resulted in thousands of people now out of work. Many of them worked for small companies.
The sleazy elected commissioners of Chester County have just sued Sunoco Logistics Partners to try and stop construction of the Mariner East 2 Pipeline on two county-owned properties where the pipeline has a legitimate, legal right to build. One of the commissioners actually uses these lawsuits as fundraisers (see 
There is an ongoing question of whether or not the Ohio Marketable Titles Act (MTA), which impacts Utica shale rights, can be used to return previously severed mineral rights back to a surface landowner, or whether the MTA is superseded by Ohio Dormant Minerals Act (DMA). In February, Ohio’s Seventh District Court of Appeals said the MTA *does* still apply to mineral rights (see 
A group of radical leftist groups filed briefs in federal court last Friday asking the court to overturn the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision from 2017 that approves and allows the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). The court case, before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, is the next phase of the battle over ACP. We name names below for which non-profit agencies should have their tax exemption ripped away because of their overt political activities in opposing ACP.
In addition to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) slapping down the New York DEC this week (see our lead story), on Wednesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down both New York and North Carolina regulators who tried to block three important Williams pipeline projects, all related to the mighty Transco Pipeline.
Last November the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, Briggs v. Southwestern Energy, that is hands-down the most important court case to ever happen regarding the Marcellus Shale in PA. And no, we’re not exaggerating. A blizzard of briefs by Southwestern and those supporting Southwestern were filed in February (see 
A notable development in a lawsuit that before now, we were unaware of. Several landowners in Venango County (northwest PA) filed a lawsuit against Shell’s SWEPI drilling subsidiary in 2013 claiming SWEPI had stiffed them out of lease bonus payments due under duly signed lease contracts. The landowners attempted to turn the lawsuit into a class action, claiming the same thing had happened for about 300 leases in the area. A federal judge has just ruled against converting the lawsuit into a class action.
A second lawsuit we’re reporting on today that had previously slipped by our usually good radar. A former Cabot Oil & Gas employee filed a lawsuit in October 2017 alleging that he and a number of other “employees” had been stiffed out of overtime payments by Cabot–that Cabot had treated them as independent contractors rather than as employees. The lawsuit was granted class certification.