Tracking Legal Events involving Electric & Telephone Cooperatives

Pedernales Electric News (Texas)

Here we attempt to highlight some of the more interesting recent developments concerning Pedernales Electric headquartered in Johnson City, Texas now involved in litigation.

These links take you outside of the Coop Litigation News website so we aren't responsible for the content.

Here as with Cobb Electric in Georgia by reading these selected news articles from oldest to the most recent, one can gain an idea of what occurs when management becomes too powerful and entrenched and abuses it to the great disadvantage of the Coop's past and current owners.  But, they also demonstrate what courageous members can do in the courts to rectify and make changes for the better.

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Austin American-Statesman
Saturday, June 20, 2009

Indictments unsealed Friday against the former general manager and top outside lawyer at the Pedernales Electric Cooperative say they arranged for thousands of dollars of co-op money to be paid to relatives of PEC executives.

According to the indictments, Bennie Fuelberg, who ran the Johnson City-based co-op for more than 30 years, and lawyer Walter Demond, directed payments exceeding $200,000 to Curtis Fuelberg, who is Fuelberg's brother, and William Price, who is the son of former Director E.B. Price. . . .

Both Fuelberg and Demond are named in the indictments on three identical felony counts — misapplication of fiduciary property, theft and money laundering. . . .  Both men are expected to be arraigned next month.

The indictments are the first result of a five-month grand jury inquiry into wrongdoing at PEC, which has more than 229,000 members in Central Texas.

The payments were uncovered last year in a review by Navigant Consulting Inc. . . . [that] found $510,000 in unexplained payments from PEC to Clark Thomas & Winters, which had been the co-op's outside law firm for 70 years.

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PEC reaches settlement with its former law firm