OIL: Long Suit

Decided last week, just 24 days less than a year after it began, was the longest court trial ever held in Texas. Involving big Humble Oil & Refining Co. and 5,000 little claimants, the trial was as picturesque as an old explorer's diary. It was so complicated that Court Reporter G. L. Dahl filled 327 notebooks with almost 5,000,000 words of testimony, accumulated so many exhibits that he finally took to hauling them to the courtroom by wheelbarrow (see cut). At stake was the ownership of 495 acres of Montgomery County oil land estimated to be worth $30,000,000.

In 1838...

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