Tax Bill

The $180 million judgment against them pushed the Hunts into bankruptcy. All Bunker Hunt had left from his billions were a few million, a stable of racehorses and a $90 million tax bill to be paid over a 15-year period, Knight said.

“Bunker would never talk to me,” Gorman said. He said the last time he saw Hunt was at a Dallas restaurant. After they ate lunch at separate tables, they arrived at the elevators at the same time. Gorman said he held the door, but Hunt insisted Gorman get in first, then declined to get in with him and thumbed his nose at the lawyer as the doors slid shut.

The case against the Hunts was “the most important manipulation case ever tried,” Jeffrey C. Williams, a witness who testified on behalf of the Hunts, wrote in his chronicle of the case, “Manipulation on Trial” (1995).

“They never tried to corner the market,” Christian said. “They bought a lot of silver. They invested, in a big way, a sloppy way. Cornering is not an accurate description.”

In the aftermath, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission adopted new limits on the positions that speculators could amass.

Rule Changes

Hunt lived for a quarter century after his humiliation. He was banned from trading commodities. His father’s company, Hunt Oil Co., born in the East Texas oil fields during the Great Depression, survived. His brother Herbert became a billionaire all over again, investing in North Dakota shale oil.

Rule changes were made in the wake of the Hunts’ rout, and they’re Hunt’s legacy, said David Kovel, an attorney at New York-based Kirby McInerney LLP specializing in commodities.

The CFTC, in a November 2013 proposal to limit the number of contracts a single trader can hold across a variety of markets, cited the Hunts’ silver trading as an example of why such limits are necessary.

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