A U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania judge has declined to take up a contract dispute between two Greene County, Pa., landowners and two gas companies, saying despite evolving Pennsylvania oil and gas law he could not confidently predict that the state Supreme Court would overturn a precedent first established more than a century ago governing the contractual liability of drillers who assign their leases to other drillers.
Because failing to make such a prediction destroyed the diversity of citizenship among the parties in Rice v. Chesapeake Energy , U.S. District Judge Mark R. Hornak said in an Aug. 1 ruling that the federal courts did not have subject-matter jurisdiction over the case and granted the plaintiff landowners’ motion to remand the suit to the Greene County Court of Common Pleas.
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