On December 28, 2022, Crisham & Holman secured a unanimous reversal of an adverse district court ruling on behalf of its client in Grayden v. Spring Creek Energy Partners, __ Fed. App’x __, 2022 WL 17972139 (10th Cir. 2022).
The team successfully convinced the Tenth Circuit that the district court erred in dismissing longtime C&H client Kimberly Grayden’s claims for fraudulent concealment, unilateral mistake, and civil theft. C&H argued that the defendants’ representations to Ms. Grayden were intended to, and did, mislead her into selling overriding royalty interests in oil-and-gas leaseholds, and that but for those misrepresentations, Ms. Grayden never would have sold her interests—interests worth over a million dollars from the time of the sale through the present.
In reversing the district court’s judgment, the Tenth Circuit panel held that, contrary to the defense arguments and the district court’s reasoning, documents recorded with the county clerk and recorder did not place Ms. Grayden on constructive notice as a matter of law, because those documents did not in and of themselves provide evidence of ongoing production at the drill site.
The three-judge panel consisted of Judge Hartz, Judge Tymkovich, and Judge Matheson, and the panel’s opinion was handed down just over a month after the case was argued by John Crisham, C&H partner and co-founder.
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