Mississippi
How Dallas Cowboy’s Owner Jerry Jones Accidentally Bought Into An Alleged $100 Million Mississippi Cancer Cluster
Environmental liabilities can come back to bite anyone, even if you’re a billionaire who should know better.
By Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff
Back in 2010, Chief Executive Jay Allison of publicly traded Comstock Resources decided to sell a small oilfield in the town of Laurel, Mississippi. It was a modest operation, decades past its heyday, with just a few dozen wells pumping out a thousand or so barrels per day. Dallas-based Comstock was eager to jettison the field.
A prospective buyer called Petro Harvester Oil & Gas, then a portfolio company of private equity giant TPG, commissioned a due diligence report on the assets. What consultants from Lafayette, La.-based Fenstermaker found was not pretty. “Housekeeping was poor at all the facilities within the Laurel field,” they wrote. Across a dozen sites and 79 wells Fenstermaker found rusting and corroded equipment, leaking pipes, worn-down containment levees, and unlined pits for storing toxic wastewater. Fenstermaker stated its concern that whoever acquires the asset should dig a little deeper into the extent of environmental damage potentially caused by oilfield wastewater seeping into the earth.
And yet none of these concerns proved to be a deal breaker; Petro Harvester acquired the assets for $75 million. Allison and his team at Comstock were understandably happy to wash their hands of the Laurel asset and move on. According to court testimony, they packed up all their Laurel records and sent them over to Petro Harvester and assumed (wrongly it turns out) that they wouldn’t have to deal with the Laurel field again.
Comstock transformed itself over the next decade. In 2018 it traded $620 million worth of its stock to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for oilfields in North Dakota. A year later Jones invested another $475 million into Comstock to back its acquisition of Covey Park Energy, a Louisiana-based natural gas driller, and he injected yet another $100 million in cash early this year when the company almost ran out of cash. Jones now owns 70% of the company, a stake worth $2.2 billion, or about 15% of his $14.2 billion fortune. Comstock is now largely a shale gas pure play, focused on drilling in the Haynesville field of Louisiana. It’s a good business when natural gas prices cooperate, like in 2022 when Comstock made $1.1 billion net income on $3.1 billion in revenue. Yet the past 12 months have been tough; as natural gas prices hit multi-decade lows Comstock’s revenues have dropped to $1.4 billion, with a net loss of $20 million. Shares are down 20% in a year.
And they may have farther to fall, as Jones now finds his Comstock investment exposed to the long tail of environmental liabilities still lingering in Laurel. This month, in Jones County Circuit Court in Laurel, a jury trial is set to begin, pitting Comstock against the family of Deidra and Marlan Baucum. The Baucums have claimed since their original 2014 lawsuit that oilfield toxins buried on the 38-acre site formerly owned by Comstock have migrated beneath the 10 acres where they live.
Their complaints became more strident in 2016 when Deidra Baucum, 61, went to see the doctor about a chronic sore throat only to be diagnosed with esophageal cancer. She had never been a smoker. An operation removed much of her windpipe, and her stomach now rests atop her right lung. She has to sleep sitting up. “Many times we could smell the material from the well site at our home,” recalls Deidra Baucum. “But we never thought it would be harmful. We assumed regulatory agencies were monitoring the situation.”
Naturally occurring toxins like arsenic, mercury and radioactive radium collect in the same rock strata as petroleum and come up out of the ground along with oil, gas and prodigious quantities of saline water. After the oil is separated, the wastewater has to be disposed. It’s too toxic to just pipe it into a river, so oil companies utilize EPA-regulated deep disposal wells — which are supposed to be drilled below any useful freshwater aquifers and carefully cased and cemented to avoid any leakage. The disposal well adjacent to the Baucums is said to have received 25 million gallons of injected waste. Some subset of that is believed to have leaked into more shallow soils via unlined evaporation ponds. Witnesses also claim that dozens of crusty, chemical-laden drums and radioactive metal were buried on the site.
Forbes values Jerry Jones’ Dallas Cowboys at $9 billion. Getty Images
The Baucums believe these toxins not only caused Deidra’s cancer (now in remission) but they may have caused a cluster. Within a third of a mile of the disposal well, 15 of their neighbors have contracted cancers, 8 already died. The most dramatic witness account comes from a neighbor, Jeremy Stevens, who according to an affidavit, says it was around 2008 when he and his brother Chad saw unusual activity on the Comstock land, less than a quarter mile from their grandparents’ house. “We saw construction equipment on an area west of the well and many holes dug in the ground. There was pipe and drums everywhere and cut up metal in the holes,” wrote Jeremy in an affidavit. “The barrels were crusted with green, yellow and white stuff.” Chad said in his affidavit that when he passed by the site one day there were backhoes digging next to the drums. When he came back later the holes had been filled in and the drums were gone.
The case has had a decade of twists and turns. The circuit court initially dismissed the complaint and sent them to the Mississippi Oil & Gas Board for adjudication. Baucum attorney Michael Simmons of Cosmich, Simmons & Brown in Jackson, Miss. appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing that regulators had no business adjudicating the case because they had no mechanism for resolving tort claims and because the Baucum had no “nexus” connecting them to the oil companies (they hadn’t entered into any contract or granted anyone permission to foul their land). In 2021 the Mississippi Supreme Court sided with the Baucums and sent the case back to be tried on the merits. That alone was a significant victory for plaintiffs’ rights, says Simmons, as this will be the first personal injury case against an oil company in Mississippi to go all the way to trial.
Soon after the Supreme Court decision, Petro Harvester, which TPG had since merged with another failing portfolio company Rockall Energy, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That was bad news for Comstock. Although bankruptcy is an effective way to discharge financial liabilities, it doesn’t get rid of environmental ones. As has long been customary in the oil and gas business, if a company becomes insolvent and can’t pay to clean up a mess it has made, the responsibility to do so travels back through what’s called the chain of title. Basically, if you ever owned a stake in an oilfield, and you’re still solvent, then landowners and regulators can seek you out and hit you up to pay for past environmental damages.
If the Baucums win their case, other plaintiffs will follow. As we drive around their Laurel neighborhood, Marlan, 62, points out the homes of other cancer sufferers, living and dead. “We’re only the first one. After we win, the floodgates are going to open,” he says.
Incredibly, Comstock has never disclosed this litigation to its public shareholders. In legal filings Comstock insists that if ground pollution is there, third party contractors would be to blame. Comstock’s chief operating officer Daniel Harrison testified under oath early this year that the company would never knowingly dump toxins, “We do not do that. We do not bury equipment anywhere.”
Indeed, Harrison testified that they never even bothered to tell Jerry Jones about the case, on the grounds that it was immaterial. What constitutes materiality? The SEC goes by the U.S. Supreme Court’s definition that a fact is material if there is “a substantial likelihood that the … fact would have been viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the ‘total mix’ of information made available.”
Bob Bowcock, an environmental tort attorney and longtime sidekick of real life Hollywood heroine Erin Brockovich, laughs at the idea that this mess could be “immaterial.” He has consulted with the Baucums and studied the site and says their entire neighborhood will need to be razed and tainted soil hauled away.
Formentera Energy bought the Laurel field assets out of bankruptcy in 2022, so the Baucums sued Formentera too, but soon dismissed them as plaintiffs once it was clear the company was inclined to operate responsibly and improve the site. “We went over and beyond on remediation,” says CEO Bryan Sheffield, who previously built Parsley Energy and sold it to Pioneer Natural Resources for $8 billion. “Any time I take over an asset I clean it up.”
Despite assurances, the Baucums fear Formentera only scratched the surface. According to John Ryan of Pace Analytical Services, which conducted eight soil borings on the Baucums land at depths from 4 to 28 feet deep and found high levels of contaminants, the recommended course of action would include installing a 30-foot-deep subterranean wall of impermeable bentonite clay in order to prevent further migration of toxins toward streams. Monitoring would need to continue “into perpetuity,” according to Ryan. This could cost $30 million.
Though a Comstock manager insisted in court that any metal processed on the site would have been hauled away, an expert electromagnetic survey last year by Allen Engineering & Science determined that “metallic waste is buried at depth.” But if it is metal, why bury it when the Laurel scrap yard is just a couple miles away and they’ll pay for it? Stevens says they took a piece of it to the yard and it tested “hot” or radioactive, which the yard won’t touch. “Both my grandparents died of cancer,” he said.
The case has had some bizarre twists. Three witnesses have alleged that Comstock attorney Norman Bailey has tried to intimidate them into changing their stories. Jeremy Stevens, who is now in his late 20s, testified under oath that Bailey showed up at his house unannounced and “to my surprise Mr. Bailey began telling me I was too young to know what I was seeing” in the field. “He told me I was wrong.” After a hearing on the allegations in early August, the judge reprimanded Bailey. Then in recent weeks, Comstock attorneys filed a motion with the court requesting that the judge bar Jerry Jones from even being mentioned at trial. The reason? So not to prejudice potential jurors who don’t like the Cowboys, the football team Jones has owned since 1989.
A key unanswered query: why not disclose this case to shareholders, and what other long-lived, open-ended environmental and legal liabilities has Comstock not told them about? “This lawsuit should have been settled years ago,” says Marlan, “and probably for less money than it is going to cost them now.”
MORE FROM FORBES
Ole Miss shouldn’t have starting quarterback Trinidad Chambliss on its roster this fall, the NCAA asserts in an appeal filed with the Supreme Court of Mississippi on Thursday.
In a petition authored by J. Douglas Minor, Jr. and other attorneys from Holland & Knight, the NCAA warns that unless the state Supreme Court intervenes, there could be a “flood of litigation” involving college athletes whose schools are denied medical waivers to let them keep playing. The NCAA also says the appeal needs to be adjudicated prior to April 23 so that Chambliss—if the NCAA can enforce its eligibility rules to render him ineligible—would “have the opportunity to participate in the upcoming NFL draft.”
The appeal faces hurdles. For starters, it is an interlocutory appeal, meaning an appeal before a final judgment in a case and one where the appellate court can decline. Interlocutory appeals are disfavored because appellate courts prefer to review cases only after a final judgment on the merits—i.e., after a trial verdict—because the record is complete by that point. An interlocutory appeal concerns only a preliminary or incomplete matter. Interlocutory appeals are ordinarily denied unless the petitioner can persuasively explain that an injustice would otherwise occur.
Last month Judge Robert Whitwell of the Lafayette County (Miss.) Chancery Court granted Chambliss—who will enter his sixth year of college this fall—a preliminary injunction to bar the NCAA from rendering Chambliss ineligible in the coming season. The NCAA limits eligibility to four seasons of intercollegiate competition, including junior college and Division II competition, within a five-year period. Chambliss exhausted his NCAA eligibility in 2025–26.
The center of the dispute concerns the 2022 season, when Chambliss, now 23, was on the roster of D-II Ferris State but didn’t accumulate passing or rushing statistics.
During that season, Chambliss suffered from post-COVID complications including chronic tonsillitis and adenoiditis. The NCAA maintains that a waiver application filed by Ole Miss on Chambliss’ behalf failed to include sufficient medical documentation establishing that Chambliss couldn’t play in 2022. The association insists it consistently applies a standard for waivers that requires contemporaneous medical records from health care professionals unambiguously establishing an athlete can’t play due to health reasons.
The NCAA says Ole Miss came up short on that front.
As the NCAA tells it, although the Ole Miss application “was voluminous,” it offered only limited contemporaneous medical documents. The NCAA says that the treatment notes of one doctor recommended that Chambliss not have surgery and that medication, including Flonase, “was prescribed to enable [Chambliss] to participate in football.” That narrative suggests that Chambliss was healthy enough to play.
To be clear, Chambliss’ legal team contests this account and argues the medical documentation was sufficient to show he was unable to play in 2022. The appeal, as the NCAA acknowledges, also doesn’t call for a review of the findings of fact, which Whitwell found persuasive enough to grant the injunction.
In its petition to the state Supreme Court, the NCAA argues that Chambliss—who is represented by attorneys Tom Mars, William Liston III and W. Lawrence Deas—tried to “circumvent” case precedent in Mississippi. That precedent, the NCAA maintains, holds that judicial review of athletic association decisions is highly deferential to the association. Chambliss allegedly “circumvented” this precedent by insisting he is a third-party beneficiary of the contractual relationship between the NCAA and Ole Miss as a member institution.
A third-party beneficiary enjoys enforceable legal interest in the contract being performed, and Chambliss asserts the NCAA harmed him by how it reviewed the “total circumstances” of Ole Miss’ application. He used that theory to claim the NCAA breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, which collectively require parties to treat other contracting parties’ situations in a fair and honest way.
The NCAA maintains that the applicable standard of review under Mississippi law for review of an athletic association’s eligibility decision is arbitrary and capricious. This standard, which was established in the state Supreme Court case Mississippi High School Activities Association v. Hattiesburg High School (2015), is extremely favorable to the association. Per this precedent, an athletic association’s eligibility decision can be upheld even if it is unreasonable and arguably wrong so long as it is not arbitrary and capricious. As the NCAA tells it, Whitwell—a University of Mississippi School of Law graduate and an elected official—failed to apply the standard as it was intended.
Mindful that interlocutory appeals are disfavored since the record is incomplete, the NCAA insists that the Supreme Court ought to review the matter because of the case’s broader implications and the timing of the situation.
The NCAA explains that, as a membership organization, it has a contractual duty to “ensure a level playing field among” all competing schools. The NCAA suggests it must seek appeals to block courts from “intervening in NCAA eligibility decisions to provide special treatment to favored athletes.” If trial judges meddle with the NCAA’s administration of eligibility rules, the NCAA’s petition argues, that meddling poses an “existential threat to the NCAA’s administration of collegiate sports.”
To corroborate that point, the NCAA warns that unless Chambliss is deemed ineligible, there will be a “flood of litigation” involving athletes whose schools are denied medical waivers. The NCAA points out that UVA quarterback Chandler Morris recently sued the NCAA in Virginia in hopes of obtaining a seventh year of eligibility, and the basis of his case is the denial of a medical waiver.
The NCAA also advises the state Supreme Court that the risk of “spillover effect” has been borne out through the aftermath of former Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s eligibility litigation against the NCAA to play a sixth season of college football.
“Since Pavia,” the NCAA writes, “over 60 lawsuits by over 100 student-athletes have raised similar challenges.” This litigation, the NCAA maintains, has caused “uncertainty” as to NCAA eligibility.
The NCAA knows that if Whitwell’s injunction isn’t lifted, the case is effectively over: The injunction will let Chambliss play for Ole Miss in 2026 and then he’ll move on to the NFL or other pursuits. Whether Chambliss would prevail in a trial, which might not be scheduled until 2027 or beyond, could be rendered irrelevant if Chambliss decides to drop the case after the 2026 season.
Chambliss v. NCAA is a reminder of the unique features of the post-House settlement world. It now pays to stay in school, given that athletes can receive full athletic scholarships, NIL deals and direct payments from their schools through revenue shares. According to ESPN, Chambliss could earn about $6 million at Ole Miss if he plays there this fall.
Jackson State football coach TC Taylor addresses fans at signing day event
Jackson State football coach T.C. Taylor addresses fans at JSU’s recruit reveal event on Feb. 4.
Mississippi leaders and educators are remembering Dr. Elayne Hayes-Anthony as a trailblazing journalist, educator and public servant following news of her death Thursday, March 5.
Hayes-Anthony, a longtime professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Jackson State University and former acting president of the university, spent decades mentoring students and shaping communications education throughout Mississippi.
Jackson State University officials announced her passing in a statement Thursday morning. She was 72. A cause of death was not provided.
Hayes-Anthony served as interim president for eight months in 2023, between former President Thomas Hudson and Marcus Thompson. She became the first Black woman to work as an anchor, producer and reporter at WJTV in Jackson and later spent 17 years as chair of the communications department at Belhaven University. Hayes-Anthony also served as assistant superintendent of communications for Jackson Public Schools and served as the first Black woman and journalism educator to become president of the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters.
Jackson Mayor John Horhn praised Hayes-Anthony in a statement as a “proud daughter of Jackson and a distinguished graduate of Jackson State University who returned home to pour her knowledge back into this community.” Horhn also extended condolences to Hayes-Anthony’s husband, family, colleagues and former students.
“Our city mourns the loss of a trailblazer whose life’s work helped shape generations of communicators, educators, and leaders,” Horhn said in a statement. “As a pioneering journalist and the first African American woman to serve as anchor, producer, and reporter at WJTV-12, she broke barriers in Mississippi media and opened doors for countless Black journalists. Her leadership at Jackson State, from the classroom to the president’s office, reflected her commitment to excellence. Jackson is better because she chose to live, work, and lead here. We honor her legacy, celebrate her remarkable life, and pray for comfort and strength for all who are grieving this tremendous loss.”
Ward 4 Councilman and Jackson City Council President Brian Grizzell, a long time educator and alumnus of JSU, said he remembered Hayes-Anthony from several points in her life and career.
“I remember Dr. Elayne Hayes-Anthony from several stages of her remarkable journey,” Grizzell said. “I first knew her as a student in Jackson Public Schools, later as a student at Jackson State University, and we reconnected years later during her time serving as acting president of Jackson State University.”
Grizzell called Hayes-Anthony a pioneer in education whose work helped shape the lives of many students across the community.
Longtime Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, also a JSU alum, honored Hayes-Anthony as a “a trailblazer in every sense of the word.”
See his post on Facebook below:
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves also offered condolences Thursday via X, formerly known as Twitter.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker also shared the following statement on Hayes-Anthony passing:
“Mississippi has lost a leader and pioneer, my friend Dr. Elayne Anthony. Jackson State benefited from her steady hand during a time of transition. She was revered by its students. The Mississippi Association of Broadcasters recognized her leadership by electing her chair. Elayne’s legacy of kindness, servant-leadership, and community service will impact generations to come.”
Investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell reflected on Hayes-Anthony’s impact on journalism in Mississippi.
“What a loss. Dr. Anthony was truly a champion for journalism. Her work produced so many talented journalists we have today in Mississippi and beyond,” Mitchell said.
State Rep. Zakiya Summers and Sen. David Blount, both of whom represent parts of Jackson in the Mississippi Legislature, also paid tribute to Hayes-Anthony.
Officials with the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Mississippi State Board of Health also shared condolences, noting Hayes-Anthony served on the Board of Health for nearly two decades.
“I personally grieve the loss of a very important Mississippian who cared deeply about education at all levels, public health, and very importantly the need for the health of our population to improve,” said Dan Edney, state health officer and executive director of the Mississippi State Department of Health. “She was a strong supporter of MSDH and for my work as State Health Officer and was one of our greatest cheerleaders. Her passing is a loss to public health and higher education leadership, but her service has helped to make our state a better place.”
Lucius Lampton, chairman of the Board of Health, said Hayes-Anthony’s service on the board began in 2007.
“Dr. Elayne Anthony’s long service on the Board of Health, which began in 2007, was exceptional and benefited the public’s health in countless ways. She led always with intellect, creativity and integrity. The Board of Health and our agency will so miss her gracious presence. I also will miss her dear friendship.”
Charlie Drape is the Jackson beat reporter. You can contact him at cdrape@gannett.com.
BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) — Gas prices along the Mississippi Gulf Coast have jumped to nearly $3 a gallon, up from $2.41 just two days ago, according to AAA.
AAA said the increase is driven by two factors: the U.S.-Iran conflict, which has shut down a key Middle East oil route and prompted attacks on refineries, and a seasonal fuel blend switch that adds up to 15 cents a gallon on its own.
Uber Eats driver James Adams said he noticed the increase immediately.
“It actually jumped like 50 to 60 cents in one day,” Adams said.
Adams said the higher cost to fill his tank cuts directly into his delivery earnings.
“We’re working basically for pennies on the dollar already — and once you factor that in with traffic and the mileage you have to go — the gas is outrageous,” Adams said.
DoorDash driver Daniel Yelle said the spike will strain his weekly budget.
“I fill up about twice a week going to and from work and DoorDash — and that’s going to hurt my budget,” Yelle said.
FedEx driver Cecil Banks said there is little that workers can do about the rise in prices.
“As long as there is wars — the price of gas is going to go up for everybody — so it’s just an unfortunate situation,” Banks said.
Banks noted that even though Mississippi’s prices remain below the national average, not driving is not an option for working families.
“What can you do? A lot of people have families — they have to go get their kids — they have to go back and forth to work,” Banks said.
Yelle echoed that sentiment.
“They don’t pay us enough for the higher gas prices,” Yelle said.
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