THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407230209
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
In the latest exchange in the bitter struggle between rival groups of Dominion Resources Inc. directors, the company's chairman and chief executive officer attacked three directors for boycotting a board meeting last week.
Dominion chairman and CEO Thomas E. Capps also refused a request from the three directors to turn over documents describing the sudden departure of a former director in June.
Dominion, based in Richmond, is the parent of Virginia Power, the state's biggest utility. A struggle over its management became public June 17 when state regulators ordered an investigation into relationships between the utility and its parent. Since then, rival groups of directors have criticized the motives of their opponents.
``Simply because you know you will be outvoted is not a valid reason to boycott board meetings,'' Capps said in a July 21 letter to Dominion directors James F. Betts, T. Justin Moore Jr. and James T. Rhodes.
The three, along with directors William W. Berry and Bruce C. Gottwald, said through attorneys last week that they would not attend the July 15 board meeting because they considered a mid-June expansion of the board from 12 members to 15 to be improper and invalid.
The resignation of former director William S. Peebles III, a Virginia Beach resident who has since died, became a contentious issue because the election of a successor provided Capps and his supporters with a sufficient number of votes to elect additional allies to the board.
``If there was not a valid, written resignation letter from Peebles before June 16, this is not a board of 15. It is a board of 12, including Peebles,'' said Arne M. Sorenson, an attorney for directors who asked to see Peebles' resignation letter and other documents.
Capps announced Peebles' resignation at a board meeting June 16, when a replacement was chosen and the board was expanded to 15.
In his letter to those directors asking to see Peebles' resignation letter and other documents, Capps said he would not make them available to anyone. ``Those documents are private to the Peebles' family,'' he contended, ``and I will not participate even in an indirect way in some sort of attack on the Peebles' family.''
Sorenson said the directors who asked to see the resignation letter have never approached the Peebles' family and have no plans to do so. by CNB