In Braxton Minerals, III, LLC v. Antero Resources Corp., No.: 1:21-CV-119 (N.D. W. Va. Oct. 24, 2024), West Virginia Magistrate Judge Michael J. Aloi granted Plaintiffs’ second motion to compel regarding their request for defendant to re-produce copies of Defendant’s West Virginia oil and gas leases without redactions, ordering Defendant to produce unredacted versions of the leases.

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Case Discussion and Judge’s Ruling

In this case involving claims pertaining to Defendant’s oil and gas royalty payments and the propriety of deduction of post-production expenses under its oil and gas leases, Plaintiffs sought to certify a class action. To that end, Plaintiffs had previously sought (via a previous motion to compel) copies of Defendant’s West Virginia oil and gas leases. Ultimately, the Court ordered that Defendant must produce a subset of its West Virginia leases, which it did.

However, Plaintiffs took issue with Defendant’s redactions of those leases. The redacted information seemed to concern things like: the names of parties to the leases, the addresses/locations of parties to the leases, book and page numbers indicating where the instruments are publicly recorded in a given County Clerk’s Office, notary stamps, dates of the leases, and the locations of the wells which are the subject of the leases. So, Plaintiffs filed a second motion to compel, requesting that Defendant be ordered to produce unredacted versions of those leases.

Plaintiffs argued that the redacted information was needed to attempt to certify the class, to more concretely determine the number of leases/class members at issue, and thus make their most accurate argument on the “numerosity” requirement of Rule 23 – as well as help determine whether the named Plaintiffs were adequate class representatives and be crucial in actually identifying the class members.

Defendant argued that the information was properly redacted because, until a class is certified, Defendant did not want its royalty owners to be contacted. Defendant also stressed that the information pertained to third parties, who have a privacy interest and argued that the redaction was consistent with the approach which this Court allowed in a similar matter pending in this Court, Romeo v. Antero Res. Corp.

Judge Aloi stated: “Upon review, the undersigned is persuaded by the arguments which Plaintiffs make about the need to accurately evaluate, organize, and cogently present information about members of the putative class. To be consistent with Dukes and similar directives, Plaintiffs should have the benefit of the redacted information, so that they can verify who is in the putative class. This will most efficiently allow the Court and the parties to evaluate the commonality and typicality requirements in the class certification phase.”

Continuing, he said: “Plaintiffs helpfully contextualized the Court’s approach in Romeo vis-à-vis the discovery dispute in the instant matter. During one discovery dispute in Romeo, the Court allowed Antero to redact certain information contained in the leases produced in discovery. In so doing, the Court relied on the representation that having payee numbers rather than royalty owners’ names and other identifying information, would allow a plaintiff to precisely ascertain the information needed to certify the class… In theory, such an approach made sense. But as a practical matter, it appears that the approach was inefficient and confounding, resulting in further discovery requests and disputes which could have been avoided if unredacted leases had been provided in the first place.” He also noted that the Romeo class “involved fewer than 400 leases” whereas “it appears that leases in the instant matter number more than 8,000”, likely compounding the issues.

In ruling that Defendant must produce unredacted versions of the leases, Judge Aloi stated: “unredacted records will allow for a much more efficient process to identify the putative class, given the nuances of Appalachian mineral title/leasing… The review which Plaintiffs’ counsel will undertake even with unredacted information is daunting enough; it becomes a practical impossibility with the redactions in place… Thus, for Plaintiffs to make sense of the information they have been given for instruments which approach 10,000 in number, common sense dictates that they need to have all information contained in the records at issue, not a subset of that information.”

Judge Aloi added: “On a related issue, it seems that the bulk of the materials which Defendant has provided are actually of public record. Thus, there is no compelling reason to designate them as ‘confidential’ under the Protective Order, and Defendant may not do so…However, it also appears that certain materials Defendant produced are not of public record; rather, what is of public record for those instruments are memoranda of leases which summarize the leases’ basic terms, not the leases themselves. Any memoranda of lease which are of public record should not be designated ‘confidential,’ but the underlying instruments which are not of public record may be so designated as ‘confidential.’ In fact, Plaintiffs agree that such underlying, un-recorded instruments may rightly be designated as ‘confidential.’”

So, what do you think? Do you agree with the Court’s decision to order Defendant to produce unredacted versions of the leases? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of eDiscovery Assistant, an Affinity partner of eDiscovery Today.

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