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Getty Oil is an oil company founded by J. Paul Getty. In 1984, Texaco bought Getty Oil of Tulsa, Oklahoma. On November 19, 1985, Pennzoil won a US$10.53 billion verdict from Texaco in the largest civil verdict in US history. (Texaco established a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had already entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.) In the end, only some of the refineries changed hands, and Getty continued to exist. Getty gas stations survived the buyout. At one time, some were co-branded with Mid-Atlantic convenience store chain Uni-Mart, which now sells its own brand of gasoline. In 1997, Russia-based Lukoil purchased Getty Marketing, which had been spun off of Getty Realty, and in 2003 began the process of converting Getty stations to Lukoil. In 2004, however, Lukoil bought many Mobil stations from ConocoPhillips, who itself bought the stations from ExxonMobil in 2000. Because Lukoil only owns certain Mobil stations with limited rights to use the Mobil name, it has stopped rebranding the Getty stations until the Mobil stations have made the change to Lukoil. According to Getty Realty's 2006 annual report, Getty Realty owns the Getty trademark and trade name in the United States and licenses them to Getty Marketing (owned by Lukoil). At one point, Getty Oil owned a majority stake of ESPN, before it was sold to the American Broadcasting Company in 1984.
