Hunt’s all-nighter prevented Joiner from seizing or freezing his wells, but the lawsuit still threatened everything. Joiner claimed fraud. He charged that Hunt had lied to him about the Deep Rock well and had bribed Deep Rock’s superintendent; the former was probably true, and the latter certainly was. Valuing the leases at fifteen million dollars, Joiner argued that he should have gotten three to five times what he had received; if a judge agreed, Hunt was staring at three million to five million dollars in damages. While Joiner put his best face forward for the press—“I have nothing against
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