Grynberg says he is owed even more and is considering appealing the verdict. Grynberg says his royalties compensation could have been nearly $40 million if a damages expert he hired had been permitted to testify before the jury. Grynberg, an 84-year-old resident of Denver and graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, said that he had been in the oil business since 1953. Grynberg said he suspected something wrong when he noticed that his mineral royalties from Kinder Morgan were 40 percent higher than his royalties from Exxon Mobil.

“I will not be cheated,” said Grynberg.

The lawsuit and similar lawsuits filed recently may inspire other royalty owners to take legal action. A major problem for many royalty owners is that the royalty statements they receive from production companies are often a single page, with no information on how the royalties were calculated or what costs were deducted. Some lawsuits have accused companies of deducting “post-production” costs from royalty payments.

Grynberg’s land contains large reserves of carbon dioxide gas, which is used to boost production in oil wells. The jury found that Exxon Mobil paid royalties based on less than the market value of the carbon dioxide.

Gregory D. Jordan is an Oil and Gas lawyer in Austin. To learn more, visit http://www.theaustintriallawyer.com or call 512-419-0684.

The royalty owners accuse Exxon of falsely informing them that the productivity of their wells was diminishing. This allegedly caused them to sell the oil and gas interests to a different buyer for less than their true value.

The dispute has been in litigation since 1996, having already reached the Texas Supreme Court in 2009 on different issues.

The royalty owners claim that they relied on false statements by Exxon about the value of the wells when they sold the leases to another company at a reduced rate. According to the royalty owners, Exxon claimed that the wells had only two years of production left, when in reality, they had 12. When the royalty owners refused to accept less than the 50 percent royalty rate they had previously received, Exxon canceled its leases. According to court records, the royalty owners later sold their interests to another party for a 30 percent royalty rate.

Exxon argues that because the royalty owners denied Exxon’s statements about the diminished productivity of the wells, the statements could not have influenced their later decision to sell to another company at a lower price.

The royalty owners argue that Exxon is raising new arguments at too late a stage in the litigation. Furthermore, they claim, the company is relying on evidence that was not originally presented to the trial court, including evidence supporting the argument that Exxon’s representations were only opinions — and therefore should not have been relied upon by the royalty owners.

Gregory D. Jordan is an Oil and Gas lawyer in Austin. To learn more, visit http://www.theaustintriallawyer.com or call 512-419-0684.