In the early 1900s, a federal judge in Massachusetts appointed Pepper receiver for the Bay State Gas Company, a bankrupt Massachusetts utility which had been promoted by former Philadelphian J. Edward Addicks, who had also caused controversy (and the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by trying to buy the Senate seat from Delaware). Pepper then sued a number of nationally known businessmen, including William Rockefeller, Henry Rogers, and Thomas Lawson, for enriching themselves at the expense of the utility, and secured several recoveries, as well as a successful receivership of the utility.