Ridiculous. Minors can’t make a contract so they can’t be bound.
The Guardian reports:
Two young children in Pennsylvania were banned from talking about fracking for the rest of their lives under a gag order imposed under a settlement reached by their parents with a leading oil and gas company.
Contract law in the USA states contracts with minors are null and void.
If you are hurt and your parents settle you can then have the case revisited when you reach 18. (A friend did this after having his back broken and his parents signing off)
Halowich’s have a 10 acre farm. Ten acres is not a farm, its a hobby.
Certainly it seems bizarre that anyone would request, or any court would approve, an order that imposes a lifetime condition of speech on a minor child. For that matter, I doubt the agreement would affect the parents beyond restricting their options to say, “We were hurt by fracking near our farm in 2011.” But I dunno for sure.
More to the point, I would say, is that developers should be fighting lawsuits of this flavor. Don’t pay these clowns $750k unless you get the farm and can use it for fracking operations. Make them prove the damage they claim — because so far, no one has proven damage from a properly-managed fracking well.