An 88-year-old Napa County businessman who has spent nearly eight decades building a family propane empire is now locked in a legal battle with one of the biggest energy companies in the country. Stan Teaderman, founder of Allied Fuel Services, and his senior vice president of operations, Dustin Kaiser, have sued Phillips 66 and several related entities, alleging fraud, concealment, breach of contract and other causes of action tied to a soured joint venture that once promised to expand Allied's reach across Northern California.
The lawsuit, first reported by The Press Democrat, centers on a business partnership that began in 2013, when Allied entered into a joint venture with brothers Joshua and Joseph Hunt, who at the time operated petroleum businesses across 12 counties. That venture, Hunt Allied Petroleum, was meant to sell bulk fuel, oil, lubricants and greases across the represented territory. According to the complaint, the arrangement fell apart after the Hunts allegedly moved joint-venture assets and customers into their own company, Hunt & Sons, which later became a wholly owned subsidiary of Phillips 66.
A Family Business Built Since 1947
Allied Fuel Services has operated as a family-run refined-fuels business in Napa and Sonoma counties for 80 years, serving residential, industrial, commercial and agricultural customers, with propane as its core product for most of that history. The Teaderman family's roots in the region stretch back to 1947, when the family moved to Napa County. Stan Teaderman went on to serve as CEO of Allied Propane Service, a company his father helped build through propane-delivery work that began in Napa County in the 1940s, according to a historical account from Allied Propane Service.
Teaderman's standing in the community extends well beyond the fuel business. He and his wife, Patty, donated $1 million to Queen of the Valley Medical Center in 2015 and established Teaderman Vineyards in Oakville in 1978, according to the Queen of the Valley Foundation. That local profile adds weight to a dispute that pits a long-tenured Napa Valley family against a Houston-based conglomerate with roots tracing back to Oklahoma oil fields in 1917 and annual revenues topping $115 billion.
Allegations of Diverted Customers and Buried Numbers
According to the lawsuit, the Hunt brothers began targeting new customers through independent entities rather than running them through the joint venture, and ultimately transferred customer accounts to Phillips 66 — a move the complaint alleges violated Allied's contractual right of first refusal. The Press Democrat's report notes that Allied's team also received sales reports showing significant irregularities between prior annual reporting and the true sales figures generated by the joint venture.
“We want our customers back from Phillips,” Teaderman said, according to the Press Democrat's report. The partnership formally splintered in October 2023, when Teaderman and Kaiser severed ties with the Hunts — two months after the Hunt brothers had sold their own petroleum operations to Hunt & Sons, according to court documents cited in the report. Court filings also indicate that Hunt Allied Petroleum partners had agreed, per a 2016 document, to invest no further money into the joint venture.
A Deal Worth Hundreds of Millions
Phillips 66's acquisition of Hunt & Sons was valued at approximately $272 million, according to the company's 2023 annual report, including roughly $146 million in intangible assets and about $67 million in goodwill. Hunt & Sons itself had grown into a sprawling operation before the sale, running 13 regional office and warehouse facilities and more than 30 commercial cardlock fueling sites across Northern California and Nevada, according to a corporate profile from HigherGov. The scale of that footprint helps explain why the fallout from the deal has rippled well beyond Napa; FreightWaves reported that Hunt & Sons was closing facilities and laying off 84 employees across 14 California locations, including Sacramento and Modesto, in November 2024.
Despite severing ties with the joint venture, the Hunts have continued to sell propane and other petroleum products in Napa and Sonoma counties, the lawsuit alleges. Teaderman and Kaiser reportedly spent most of a year negotiating with Phillips 66 in an attempt to resolve the dispute before turning to litigation, per the Press Democrat's reporting.
Allied's Ties to Chevron Complicate the Picture
Teaderman has said that Allied Pacific Energy, the successor to Allied Fuel Services, is the only branded marketer in the country representing Chevron in natural-gas renewable sales. Most of its product comes from the Chevron refinery in Richmond. Allied Propane Service also serves Northern California and has a Richmond address.
A Winding Path Through the Courts
Allied filed its original lawsuit in December 2025. The case was later moved to federal court before being remanded back to Napa County Superior Court on July 1, 2026. Allied then filed an amended complaint on July 16, 2026, adding several additional defendants in the Napa County venue.
The co-defendants have rejected each accusation in the suit. Rather than litigate the claims in open court, the Hunts are seeking binding arbitration — a procedural fight that will be decided by Judge Cynthia P. Smith at a hearing scheduled for November 17, 2026, in Napa. Under California Code of Civil Procedure Section 1281.2, trial judges have discretion to deny or delay arbitration requests when pending litigation involving non-arbitrating third parties creates a risk of conflicting rulings on the same set of facts, according to an analysis from Rogoway Law.
The Napa dispute is not the only legal front connected to the Phillips 66-Hunt deal. In August 2024, Phillips 66 itself sued the Hunt brothers in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging fraud, trademark infringement and other counts — a separate case that underscores how much friction the 2023 acquisition has generated across multiple courts. Phillips 66 traces its corporate lineage to a 2002 merger with Conoco.
