was when Bush was in the midst of preparations for his failed 1964 senate bid. Farris had
tried to get elected to Congress on the GOP ticket, but failed. During the Nixon
Administration, Farris became the United States Attorney in Houston. Given what we
know of the relations between Nixon and George Bush (to say nothing the relations
between Nixon and Prescott Bush), we must conclude that a patronage appointment of
this type could hardly have been made without George Bush's involvement. Tough Tony
Farris was decidedly an asset of the Bush networks.
Now Tough Tony Farris was a State District Judge whose remaining ambition in life was
an appointment to the federal bench. Farris did not recuse himself because his patron,
George Bush, was a former business partner and constant crony of Chariman Mao
Liedkte. Farris rather began issuing a string of rulings favorable to Pennzoil: he ruled that
Pennzoil had a right to quick discovery, rocket-docket discovery from Texaco. Farris was
an old friend of Pennzoil's lead trial lawyer Joe Jamail, and Jamail had just given Tough
Tony Farris a $10,000 contribution for his next election campaign. Jamail, in fact, was a
member of Tough Tony's campaign committee. Texaco attempted to recuse Farris, but
they failed. Farris claimed that he would have recused himself if Texaco's lawyers had
come to him privately, but that their public attempt to get him pitched out of the case
made him decide to fight to stay on. Just at that point the district courts of Harris County
changed their rules in such a way as to allow Bush's man Tough Tony Farris, who had
presided over the pretrial hearings, to actually try the case.
And try the case he did, for fifteen weeks, during which the deck was stacked for
Pennzoil's ultimate victory. With a few weeks left in the trial, Farris was diagnosed as
suffering from a terminal cancer, and he was forced to request a replacement district
judge. The last-minute substitute was Judge Solomon Casseb, who finished up the case
along the lines already clearly established by Farris. In late November, 1985, the jury
awarded Pennzoil damages of $10.53 billion, a figure that exceeded the total Gross
National product of 116 countries around the world. Casseb not only upheld this
monstrous result, but increased it to a total of $11,120,976,110.83.
Before the trial, back in January, 1985, Chairman Mao Liedkte had met with John K.
McKinley, the chairman of Texaco, at the Hay-Adams Hotel across Lafayette Park from
the White House in Washington DC. Liedkte told McKinley that he thought what Texaco
had done was highly illegal, but McKinley responded that his lawyers had assured him
that his legal position was "very sound." McKinley offered suggestions for an out-of-
court settlement, but these were rejected by Chairman Mao, who made his own counter-
offer: he wanted three sevenths of Getty Oil, and was now willing to hike his price to
$125 a share. According to one account of this meeting:
Liedtke seemed to go out of his way to mention his friendship with George Bush, according to Bill
Weitzel of Texaco. "Mr. Liedkte was quite outspoken with regard to the influence that he felt he
had--and would and could expect in Washington--in connection with antitrust matters and
legislative matters," McKinley would say in deposition. "This idea that Pennzoil was not without
political influence that could adversely affect the efforts of Texaco in completing its merger." [fn
3]