An oil and gas tycoon in Oklahoma wrote a $975 million check by hand — and even got the date correct, a hard task this soon after the New Year — but it was all for nothing.
Sue Ann Arnall declined to accept a check for $974,790,317.77 from her ex-husband, Harold Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company headquartered in Oklahoma City, CNBC reported.
That massive sum is what Hamm was ordered to pay Arnall in a divorce judgement handed down in November.
But Arnall has appealed the decision on the grounds that Hamm is worth an estimated $18 billion, and she believes she deserves a larger payout.
“Ms. Arnall, through her counsel, stated that they were rejecting the…payment because Ms. Arnall did not want to risk the dismissal of her appeal by acceptance of the benefits,” Hamm’s attorney, Michael Burrage, told CNBC in a statement.
The appeal is set to be heard by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Arnall worked for 26 years as an executive at Continental Resources, which drills mostly in the Bakken oil field of North Dakota.
According to CNBC, Hamm holds a 68 percent stake in Continental, which has seen its share price fall by more than half as oil prices continue their free fall.
Continental’s stock price reached an all-time high of nearly $81 per share in August. Shares traded at around $34 on Tuesday.
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