LITIGATION SUPPORT & DATA ANALYSIS
Commercial — Oil & Gas Litigation Support [Client confidential]
Plaintiffs alleged the gas company had defaulted on royalty payments across specific county sections. The outcome of this dispute demanded data extraction and analysis of land records, mineral rights claims dating to the 1800s, and the physical path the gas actually took underground.
A MAZE OF NATURAL GAS WITH NO FIXED PATH |
1800s–PresentLAND RECORD HISTORY REVIEWED |
3-DMODEL BUILT FOR JURY PRESENTATION |
THE SITUATION
Leaseholders believe the gas company extracting natural gas from their land had failed to make royalty payments for gas removed from county-specific sections. The core evidentiary challenge was that natural gas doesn’t move in a straight, traceable line; it travels through a natural underground maze of rock pockets and geological formations, with no fixed path to point to as proof. Building a case meant establishing two separate things: land ownership and mineral rights lineage back to the early 1800s, and the actual underground path the gas had taken. Most importantly, whatever was found had to be comprehensible to a judge and jury, not just technically correct.
THE APPROACH
iBridge researched and reviewed land record titles and documents dating to the early 1800s to establish ownership lineage. From that research, the team built a database covering land ownership, mineral rights, and historical property boundary changes, then used it to cross-reference property locations against mineral rights claims. To account for the gas itself, iBridge brought in its GIS team to record land formation changes over time, such as shifts in underground rivers and other geological factors, all integrated into the same database.
The result fed into a 3-D model combining land records, mineral rights claims, and gas flow and geological data, built for presentation to the jury.
— A cross-referenced database tied property locations to mineral rights claims, enabling direct analysis of how royalty payments were calculated and distributed
— The GIS team’s record of land formation changes, including underground river shifts, was integrated into the same database rather than tracked as a separate analysis
Two centuries of land records, GIS geological data, and mineral rights claims — combined into one 3-D model a jury could actually follow. |
CAPABILITIES DEMONSTRATED
- Historical land and title record research
- Mineral rights and lineage analysis
- GIS integration with legal/ownership data
- 3-D visualization for litigation/jury presentation
WHY IT MATTERS
Litigation like this rarely turns on whether the underlying facts exist; it turns on whether they can be found, connected, and explained. This engagement shows the full chain: two centuries of scattered land title records pulled into one lineage, mineral rights claims cross-referenced against that lineage, and a physically invisible resource of gas moving through geological pockets no one can see or walk. All reconstructed well enough to model in three dimensions.
That combination is what separates iBridge’s litigation support from standard document review: it’s not just retrieving records; it’s turning historical paper and geological data into something a jury with no technical background can follow and trust. That’s the capability that transfers to any dispute where the facts are real but buried.