After many years of proceedings, Judge Jones has issued a lengthy opinion addressing the certification of classes for the coalbed methane royalty cases against CNX and EQT.
The opinion is interesting for many reasons - one is simply that the PDF file is bookmarked, to aid in navigating the document, which is more than 100 pages.
The Court concluded once more that the requirement of "ascertainability" is not reason enough to deny certification of some of the proposed classes. I think it is a much bigger problem than any legal issues. There are too many fractional interests split too many ways.
The Court refused to cite a class for the lessors of CNX. The vagaries of the family trees are a lot trickier than the differences between the leases that I've seen.
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