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Angry and vengeful, Pennzoil's Liedtke sued Texaco, and last week the oil giant paid a painful price for its successful maneuver. A Houston jury decided that Texaco had sabotaged Pennzoil's contract with Getty, and fined Texaco an awesome $10.5 billion. It was the largest sum ever awarded in a corporate court fight, dwarfing the $1.8 billion won by MCI in a 1980 suit against...
Texaco Attorney Richard Miller tried to show that Getty's agreement with Houston-based Pennzoil was never consummated. Getty Board Member Henry Wendt testified that the offer of $110 a share by Pennzoil's Liedtke was "hostile" and said the board had rejected it on Jan. 2. Miller argued that Getty's board had felt trapped by Pennzoil's offer and sought out a so-called white knight to be a friendlier merger partner...
...Houston jury, however, was led to believe otherwise by Pennzoil's colorful lawyer, Joseph Jamail. A Lone Star folk hero who wears cowboy boots in court, Jamail may earn more than $2 billion in legal fees if the fine stands. A personal-liability specialist, he once won a $6.8 million settlement against Remington Arms, a gun company...
Reverberations from the Houston decision echoed down Wall Street. The day the verdict was announced, Texaco stock fell $3, to close at $36.25, while Pennzoil shot up $7.62, to $57.50. Some irate legal experts felt that the compensation awarded to Pennzoil was disproportionate to the injury. Said Martin Klein, chairman of the American Bar Association's bankruptcy-litigation subcommittee: "Pennzoil is in a better position than it would have been if the merger had gone through...
...this is hard work, I feel guilty," joked Congressman Bill Nelson, 43, who is training at Houston before blasting off on the space shuttle in three weeks. "In addition to learning how to use the toilet, I have another purpose. I want to understand how NASA works and how it's been successful," said the Florida Democrat, who by no coincidence is chairman of the Space Science and Applications subcommittee. His special assignment during the five-day flight will be to grow crystals in space for cancer research. But first he will have to learn to be a bit more...