During the last oil boom in the early 1980's, we were retained by W. T. "Bud" Massey to represent over a thousand of his landowner lessors in what came to be know as the Despacing Cases. In Mitchell DeClerck's 100 years we've seen a number of these "booms".
Massey had obtained oil and gas leases (the "Top Leases") on hundreds of thousands of acres of farm land from Northwest Oklahoma farmers that would only be good if existing leases expired (the "Bottom Leases"). He then successfully sought and obtained court orders to cancel the Bottom Leases which big oil company had been sitting on for decades to the detriment of the farmers.
Since oil was then well over $100 a barrel in today's dollars, a gold rush ensued with others seeking to drill wells to extract the expensive oil to the benefit of our clients and the farmers. Typically the Big Oil companies tried a myriad of ploys and subtrefuges to stop Massey and eventually the United States Supreme Court approved what Massey had done.
The litigation was a complex and interesting one in which we were called upon to manage and organize thousands of pleadings affecting more than a thousand clients in over a hundred cases -- all before personal computers were widely used.