Family Business: Suing Everyone Since 1976

Rachel Grynberg runs RSM Production Corporation with her brother Stephen and sister Miriam. They inherited the company from their father Jack. Like him, they spend a lot of time in court. Suing people is basically the family business now.

One giant win paid for everything else. Back in 1990 Jack made a deal with British Gas to explore Kazakhstan together. He brought them the massive Karachaganak field. Then British Gas cut him out and partnered with someone else. Jack sued. They settled in 1993. The Grynbergs got fifty million dollars upfront plus fifteen percent of all Kazakhstan profits. That deal runs until 2038. By 2010 it was bringing in one hundred to two hundred forty million dollars every single year.

The pattern started way earlier. Jack took his company Oceanic Exploration public in 1972. By 1976 it was broke. The bank sued. Jack gave up control of his own shares to a trust just to keep the loans coming. Four months later he tried to back out of that agreement. He sued to cancel it. He complained he couldn't vote or sell his own stock anymore. Those were the exact terms he had agreed to. He won a round in 1979 but lost at the Delaware Supreme Court in 1981. The company eventually moved on without him. He kept suing it anyway.

Later came the Caspian Sea cases. Jack settled with BP and Statoil over the huge Kashagan field in 1999. Then he sued the new buyers Total and Shell claiming he was owed more. He lost in Colorado. He lost in New York. He tried again in Delaware. The judge threw it out and sanctioned Jack and his lawyers for bad faith. They kept bringing claims other courts had already rejected.

Jack also accused BP and its CEO John Browne of racketeering and bribes in Kazakhstan. That went to private arbitration for thirteen years. The arbitrator dismissed the claims in 2010 and hit Jack with a three million dollar sanction. A New York court erased that fine later. An appeals court agreed BP couldn't deduct bribes as business expenses. But when the arbitrator ignored that ruling he got removed in 2014. A federal judge in Washington refused to reopen the case in 2016. The royalty lawsuits under federal law are a whole other story.