Unocal Can’t Exclude Pickens

A Delaware Chancery Court today barred Unocal Corp. from excluding Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens Jr. from its lucrative stock buy-back program.

At stake was whether Unocal could block an attempt by a Pickens-led group to seize control of Unocal, parent of Los Angeles-based Union Oil Co. of California and the nation’s 13th-largest oil concern. Pickens, chairman of Mesa Petroleum Co. of Amarillo, Tex., had challenged his exclusion from Unocal’s stock buy-back as discriminatory. Unocal defended it as a proper response to protect the company from an unwanted suitor.