Denver oil tycoon Jack Greenberg told an Arapahoe County district judge that the 80-year-old's family will receive $400 million in compensation for his life's work in building a $1 billion empire for his family. I'm trying to convince you that I owe you something.
That's because an Arapahoe County jury ruled last week that Greenberg didn't have a valid contract to run the company he founded, but put the contract in the name of his then-wife and three children. , as a result of which they decided that they could fire him if they wanted. To.
And they do.
The lawsuit, which has been going on for nearly three years, claims Greenberg's ex-wife Celeste, 83, and the couple's three children: Rachel, 58, Stephen, 56, and Miriam, 54. ) have undertaken what is essentially a hostile takeover of several companies they own. But Greenberg operated without oversight for decades.
They argued that Mr. Greenberg never had a formal agreement with them to manage the company and that his advanced age, 87 years old, got in the way of him making the right decisions to keep the business profitable, and the jury also agreed.
In his defense, Mr. Greenberg argued that his contract gave him the ability to run most of the companies that invested heavily in the world's oil and gas reserves until he died. .
But he also said he had done this without receiving any formal salary. Now that he lost the first stage of the lawsuit, he claims he is entitled to back pay from Labor.
According to his calculations, that's about $400 million.
Lawyers on both sides of the case have been prevented from discussing the case publicly, with District Judge Charles Pratt issuing dozens of orders keeping thousands of pages of documents from public release. Much remains hidden.
The family is fiercely protective of their privacy, and in publicly available court filings they say that if the inside details were known, they could cause significant damage to the Greenberg dynasty, which is worth more than $1 billion. It states that there is.
A large part of the case hinges on the family's argument that Mr. Greenberg is not the same old Jack who frequently accused BP, Conoco, Shell and a handful of other oil conglomerates as well as foreign governments around the world. of cheating and misconduct. A distinguished graduate of the Colorado School of Mines and a Holocaust survivor, Greenberg used the courtroom extensively to amass a fortune and build an empire.
“Jack's increasingly questionable judgment and erratic decision-making in recent years have raised the concerns of his wife and children,” court documents filed by the family state said. “Jack's words…reveal the problem of a lack of ethical judgment in business…” and that his reckless business decisions were mere personal whims, costing him millions of dollars in losses. The family said in a filing that
For example, court testimony showed that Greenberg was often the target of shy people who hatched elaborate plots for his money. One of hers was about the fictional princess Esperanza of the House of Bourbon and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The title “Princess of the Two Sicilies” does exist, and there are currently 19 people alive, but none of them are named Esperanza.
Another plan involved claiming billions of dollars in proceeds from Romanian gold bonds issued in 1928. According to testimony, no such bond existed and had no expected return.
Mr. Greenberg testified that he was not fooled by any of the plots and that he suffered no losses.
“We expected to get $2 billion, but we didn't get a penny,” Greenberg testified. “I didn't pay any money. I trusted them, but they didn't get a dime from me.”
The fight cost him his marriage (the couple divorced last year) and further strained his already tenuous relationship with his children. Documents revealed that he was deeply disappointed that his family was “scheming” to take control of the company they founded with them in mind.
At the center of the dispute are three companies founded by Greenberg, Gadeco, Plicaspian and RSM, which control his vast oil holdings, each owned by his children.
At one point during trial testimony, it was revealed that just one company's assets generated as much as $30 million in revenue each quarter, much of it from royalties from oil fields spread across countries as far away as Kazakhstan. It was a payment.
Colorado law has a provision that gives people over 70 the right to a speedy trial, but the case is expected to take at least another year or two and an appeal could go to the state Supreme Court. expensive.
The lawsuit alleges that Greenberg paid $600,000 to buy the home of his secretary, Candace Dee Smith, who claims in the Douglas County lawsuit that her former boss He claims that he repeatedly forced her to have sex with him in retaliation. In Mr. Smith's lawsuit, three other female former employees came forward with allegations of sexual harassment by Mr. Greenberg. That lawsuit is pending.
