I am posting this as a cautionary tale for anyone seeking legal counsel in Northwest Louisiana.

In October/November of 2020, I and my cousins (who have an LLC) engaged the law firm of Davidson Summers to help us with an mineral lease with GEP.  We had interest in undivided heir property and had recently gotten our mineral rights back from a well drilled in 2010 by CHK.  That well was plugged in the summer of 2017 and CHK let the three years expire on the lease.  The firm referred us to one of their associates who was supposedly being mentored by the late Randall Davidson; this associate is no longer with the firm and is now a personal injury lawyer (Harold Bicknell III).  This associate prepared a lease based on what we had told him we had negotiated as terms with landmen from GEP.  We were not provided with a preliminary copy of the lease but rather with one that was purportedly complete and ready to be signed.  My cousins were sent a copy as they reside out of state.  We all read and signed out respective leases without the attorney going over it to advise us of a clause which had apparently been requested by GEP and did not mention that this clause would make us unleased mineral owners should the original well be reopened.  Neither myself or my cousins had requested such a clause as the only potential benefit was to GEP and we are not attorneys.  Not being attorneys was why we had hired this firm/associate to act on our behalf and get us what was hopefully a better lease than the ones which had been signed in 2007 when our family didn't know any better and, for whatever reason, chose not to have legal counsel before signing anything.  

Flash forward to January 2023 when we once again went to this firm and engaged the services of William Lake Hearne, Jr. to work with us on a surface use agreement with GEP, and what was expected to be a pipeline right of way on a different piece of property in different section from the one in 2020.  He and I spoke at some length on January 30 (I think) and I mentioned that there would almost certainly be a pipeline right of way proposal coming in the near future as there would be no other way for GEP to market their gas without a pipeline.  Apparently he did not make note of this but focused only on the surface lease agreement. We signed an employment contract which allowed either party to terminate the agreement with or without cause at any time.  Mr. Hearne did contact the landman about the surface use agreement and in April I received a proposal for a pipeline right of way and a valve site easement.  I called the attorney's office, printed out the proposal and delivered it personally into Mr. Hearne's hands in the waiting area of their offices.  He looked over the proposal and commented that it shouldn't be any problem as he had worked out a similar agreement with this company just a short time before.  A short time later, I received a copy of the redlined proposals for the surface use, pipeline right of way and valve site easements.  I forwarded copies to my cousins and I and they read over them and I sent Mr. Hearne an email in late April advising that we approved the proposals.

I will also mention at this point that my cousins were forwarding pictures of the work being done on the pad site by GEP as was allowed under the 2007 lease.  The 7 acres was cleared, all the preliminary work done, a rig brought in and two wells were drilled.  GEP completed everything and still nothing additional was forthcoming from the attorney.  I finally emailed him in June after all the work was completed on the well site including the pipeline to ask what was happening with our proposals.  His response was that he had "missed" my email in April and apologized.  Nothing else happened and shortly thereafter we became aware that GEP had in fact reopened the previously plugged well mentioned above as of January 2023.  When we inquired, they informed us of the clause that exempted that plugged wellbore and that we were unleased mineral owners on that well and would of course get no money at all until the well reached payout.  We proceeded to bring this up to Mr. Hearne since Mr. Bicknell had been in his firm's employ when this lease was prepared and advised that we were now looking at a situation where we would very likely never see a dime in payments on this well.  We were not happy.  Mr. Hearne agreed to look into this and not to charge us for any work on this unfortunate situation.  He had the file pulled from archives and in the meantime said that he probably would have advised us to sign the lease anyway in case GEP had decided to withdraw their offer if we did not.  I emailed him back to advise that he was obviously unfamiliar with the fact that we had had two companies bidding for our mineral rights and had we been properly advised of the potentially detrimental nature of the clause, we could have simply gone to the other company and dropped GEP.  He did review the case file from archives and said there was no indication that Mr. Bicknell had had any contact at all with GEP.  I emailed back to ask how did one negotiate a contact without ever contacting one of the parties and suggested that if this were a standard clause that was used by their firm, then would he please provide me with a copy of any other leases that contained the clause making one of the parties a potentially an unleased mineral owner.  There was no response.

I will give Mr. Hearne credit for actually writing to GEP's attorney, Jeffery Lieberman, pointing out that the Payout Statement we received had a number of costs assessed to us that were not in compliance with the Louisiana statutes governing unleased mineral owners.  Among others, GEP was assessing us for drilling costs for the well when it was drilled by CHK back in 2010 and when we were leased so would not have been responsible for any of CHK's said expenses.  GEP sent a reply from one of their landmen which basically said "oops" and sent a somewhat revised payout statement which seemed to correct a couple of the assessments but left a quite number of questions unanswered.  

On the last Friday in August, Mr. Hearne sent us an email at 4:54 PM advising us that we were no longer his clients and that the right of way and valve site easement offers were no longer available but he thought we would still be compensated for timber damage.  My cousins and I were pretty furious at this point and I sent him two emails over the weekend.  Now I will admit that I am very direct with people but I did not call him names although I was certainly thinking of some.  I believe my cousins also sent one but I did not see it so I have no confirmation of that.  I did have my emails read over by someone else to make sure that I was not too "over the top" before I hit "send".  They were completely straightforward and I don't think it would be possible to mistake my feelings.

I subsequently contacted the landman for Williams Pipeline who said that time had been a critical factor in their offer(s) and that they had had to go ahead and use the terms in the original lease to put in the pipeline, etc.  He stated that Mr. Hearne had in fact contacted him on August 3 and he had told him at that time that the offer was no longer available.  This means that Mr. Hearne was aware of the offers no longer being available for nearly three weeks before advising us as his clients.  The pipeline right of way and valve site offer under the original lease resulted in approximately a 92% loss in payments to us.  Somewhat later I spoke with the landman for GEP who also confirmed that Mr. Hearne had contacted him on August 3 and said he (the landman) was surprised as he had not heard from Mr. Hearne for five or six months.  He advised that GEP would still be willing to work with us on a land use agreement and he said that Mr. Hearne did send him a revised proposal later but by then he was aware that Mr. Hearne had terminated as our attorney so did not reply.  

Mr. Hearne sent me a letter the following week and stated among other things that he had never been "tasked" with handling these matters.  This left me wondering as to why he didn't say anything at any point in the seven months that he was working for us that he did not consider this to be part of his job.

I have since called nearly every law firm in town trying to secure another attorney to represent me in possibly working out a land use agreement and also to continue the discussion with GEP about their "creative accounting" which appears to continue to have some variance with those laid out in the legislative requirements.  I did finally find an attorney and we have had one initial meeting.  Hopefully there will be some better outcome(s).

I can only suggest that one exercise caution if choosing an attorney.  Our two experiences with this firm had not been good for us and I can only hope that others have been more fortunate.

Layla