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After a 15-year court fight, a small group of gasoline station owners has defeated ExxonMobil, which they claim cheated them and thousands of other dealers out of more than $1 billion -- a penny at a time.

This week, more than 11,000 former and current Exxon dealers learned they would share more than $1 billion from the settlement of a class-action lawsuit started by 11 plaintiffs in 1991. A Miami federal judge has given tentative approval to the pact.

Lawyers will take up to one-third of the payout, but some owners stand to receive upward of $1 million because Exxon never gave them an average of 1.3 cents per gallon of gas sold.

One of the original plaintiffs, Alberto Gonzalez of Miami, reminisced about the years that have passed since he and a small group of gasoline dealers filed suit against Exxon Corp. for shortchanging them of promised fuel discounts.

"I'm holding a picture of me taken in 1991 and I looked young then. I had black hair. It's gray now," said Gonzalez, 67, one of the original plaintiffs in what became a class-action lawsuit against the company that merged with Mobil Corp. in 1999. On Monday, ExxonMobil posted record profits for any U.S. firm -- $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year.

"A lot of people lost their businesses after what Exxon did. Some, like me, went bankrupt," Gonzalez said.

"Some got divorced. And, sadly, some died before they got justice," added Gonzalez, who got out of the gas station business in 1992.

The dispute, which centered on Exxon's "Discount for Cash" program that ran between 1983 and 1994, has involved five law firms and has gone up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The oil company lost its last appeal in June.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Alan Gold granted preliminary approval of a settlement under which Exxon will pay $1.075 billion in compensatory damages and interest on valid claims filed by Dec. 19. The judge will consider final approval, after any objections have been submitted, on April 5, according to attorney Mark Dikeman of Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson of Miami.

"A lot of people are just exhausted," said Gonzalez, who said he is grateful to see the legal wrangling coming to a close. His firm, Allapattah Services Inc., was one of the 11 original plaintiffs, though two dropped out. The remaining nine have received their settlements, ranging from $100,000 to $800,000, though they could share incentive awards totaling almost $16 million.

The plaintiffs didn't use any sophisticated detective work to determine they were being shortchanged, Gonzalez said.

"I was at a national dealer advisory council meeting in Houston in November 1990, and the fellow sitting next to me asked an Exxon executive if the company was giving dealers the discount it promised to them," he said. "A general manager stood up and said, `We have not given you the discount, but we will.' So they gave it to us for a short time and took it away again."

The first call several of the dealers in the room made was to their lawyers, Gonzalez said. "I got involved because I believe in justice. It took 15 years, but we got justice."

The case was first tried in 1999, but the jury deadlocked. Exxon maintained -- and still maintains -- that it did reduce the wholesale price of gas to offset a new fee on credit-card sales.

In a second trial in 2001, the jury sided with the dealers on every disputed issue, concluding Exxon had a contractual obligation to offset credit fees with wholesale price reductions and that Exxon breached this obligation.

Subsequent appeals by Exxon on various issues in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court failed. Exxon really had nowhere left to go, Dikeman said. An Exxon spokesman had no comment.

For Gonzalez, who now sells health insurance, the victory is a bittersweet one, though he said he's excited that word of the tentative settlement "is spreading like gasoline."

"I owned a gas station for less than four years. When I sold it, I promised my wife I would never own another one," he said. "You're responsible for all of the investment, all the risk, all the work -- and the oil company gets almost all the profits."

He added: "The happiest day of my life was when I fled Cuba in 1972. The second-happiest day was when I sold my gas station."

Glenn Singer can be reached at gsinger@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6612.

Article Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Legal-eze provided the trial exhibits & demonstrative evidence services, multimedia technicians, courtroom equipment, and even fabricated several pieces of hardware for opening & closing statements.