Berg, Harold E.

Before his death in 1976, J. Paul Getty personally selected Harold E. Berg to succeed him as president of the Getty Oil Company. In 1984, Texaco bought Getty Oil. Berg played a prominent role in the Pennzoil-Texaco dispute of December 1985. In this landmark case, Pennzoil claimed that Texaco had fraudulently convinced the Getty Oil Company to break the binding merger contract between Getty and Pennzoil that resulted in Pennzoil’s loss of a billion barrels of choice oil reserves. The court decided in favor of Pennzoil even though Pennzoil had never signed a formal contract for the original deal. Texaco, Incorporated, was ordered to pay nearly $11 billion to Pennzoil Company.

Source: Petzinger, Thomas. The Texaco-Pennzoil wars: Inside the $11 Billion Battle for Getty Oil . Beard Books, 1999.

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