CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A federal judge has dismissed all 73 lawsuits in which a Colorado oilman had claimed that natural gas companies around the West had underreported their production on federal lands.
Jack Grynberg, who runs a petroleum company based in Greenwood Village, Colo., had sued 73 energy and pipeline companies charging they inaccurately measured gas production. Under the federal False Claims Act, he stood to collect a bounty if the courts agreed.
However, in a strongly worded ruling entered Friday, U.S. District Judge William Downes of Casper concluded that most of Grynberg's knowledge of the companies' gas-measurement techniques was secondhand or speculative. Federal law requires that to collect a bounty, a person must show the government new information about the fraud he or she alleges.
"Grynberg deliberately chose to make sweeping allegations of fraud against nearly the entire industry, based in large part on rank speculation," Downes wrote. "By employing such odious tactics, he now becomes the instrument of his own undoing."
Details here from the AP via the Houston Chronicle.