In a recent decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided the state attorney general’s office can’t invoke the state’s consumer protection law to sue Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. on behalf of landowners who claim they didn’t get fair deals in leasing their mineral rights, according to Penn Live.
The high court concluded only buyers are protected from being swindled under the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law — not sellers.
Therefore, that law cannot be used in the case the attorney general’s office filed against Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. because those firms were buying, not selling, leases to secure rights to oil and natural gas reserves beneath land the property owners possess in Marcellus Shale regions of the state, Justice Sallie Mundy wrote in the Supreme Court’s majority opinion.
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