Central to a great deal of the malfeasance which has occurred at the Interior Department over the past six-plus years is the question of unpaid or underpaid royalties by extraction industry leasees on federal and Indian land. While mostly shuffled under the bed by the previous Republican Congresses, the issue gained greater scrutiny just last week, when the House Committee on Natural Resources called witnesses, including former MMS investigator-turned-whistleblower, Bobby Maxwell. Maxwell recently prevailed in a multi-million dollar case against oil and gas giant Kerr-McKee, which Maxwell filed as a private citizen when his superiors at Interior refused to address the issue. He was fired after filing the suit.
Thus, when I read this in the New York Times, I was rather depressed:
WASHINGTON, April 2 - A federal judge in Denver has overturned a jury’s verdict in favor of a whistle-blower at the Interior Department who charged that the Kerr-McGee Corporation cheated the government out of millions of dollars for oil and gas it pumped in publicly owned coastal waters.
In a ruling that could have big implications for whistle-blowers, as well as for the oil and gas industry, the judge ruled that the former Interior Department auditor was not eligible to sue Kerr-McGee as a private citizen because he had gathered most of his evidence while on the job.
The judge did not question the jury’s verdict that the auditor, Bobby L. Maxwell, had uncovered cheating by Kerr-McGee. Nor did the judge dispute hat Mr. Maxwell had filed his lawsuit as a private citizen after senior Interior Department officials in Washington ordered him to abandon his findings.
Rather, the judge said Mr. Maxwell failed a crucial technical requirement for seeking to recover money under the False Claims Act, a law that encourages private whistle-blowers to help recover money from companies that cheat the government.
...
After a one-week trial in January, a federal jury in Denver agreed with Mr. Maxwell that Kerr-McGee had cheated the government out of about $7.5 million in royalties on oil that it had been pumping on federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
Under the False Claims Act, Kerr-McGee could have been forced to repay more than $30 million, and Mr. Maxwell would have been entitled to as much as 30 percent.
But the judge who presided over the trial, Phillip S. Figa, dismissed the verdict on Friday, saying that he had re-evaluated the question about Mr. Maxwell’s eligibility to invoke the law.
Of course, in light of the current USA scandal, I find it's appropriate to check out the federal judge who made the ruling, in this case, Denver Judge Phillip S. Figa. Figa was appointed to the bench by Bush in 2002, but has handed down at least one other slap to the Administration, rebuking FWS for not listing the clearly endangered Yellowstone cutthroat trout.
However, that wasn't the real shocker: Instead, it was the important bit of information left out of the NYTimes article:
Federal Judge Figa's family receives 'bad news' about fight with brain cancer
Doctors say his aggressive tumor needs treatment
By Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News
March 23, 2007
Denver federal Judge Phillip S. Figa is suffering from an aggressive brain tumor, his family and colleagues said Thursday.
The U.S. district court judge is recuperating at Rose Medical Center from surgery performed March 16. Family members had said the operation was a success and that Figa, 55, had been moved out of intensive care.
"The doctor shared some bad news with us (Tuesday) night," Figa's family said in a statement posted on a Web site. "Unfortunately, Phil has an aggressive brain tumor. He will need radiation and chemotherapy as soon as he has healed from his surgery. We will better know his prognosis at the conclusion of the treatment."
My own father died from a malignant brain tumor, so my heart goes out to the Figa family. However, I find it bizarre, almost inconceivable, that a week after Judge Figa was released from the hospital after undergoing extensive, emergency brain surgery, and before his family had even updated his condition on their PR website, he issued this stunning reversal.
The case is expected to be appealled by Maxwell. I'm curious as to whether the New York Times attempted to interview Figa, to see if he was in fact the actual author of the reversal (according to a court website, Figa's cases were to be handled by other federal judges during his absence.)