Judge Increases Penalties For Justice-Owned Kentucky Fuel Corp.

A federal judge in eastern Kentucky has imposed new penalties on a coal company owned by U.S. Sen. Jim Justice.

Kentucky Fuel Corp. must pay a total of nearly $850,000 in attorney fees to plaintiff New London Tobacco Market, including nearly $650,000 over a judgment issued five years ago.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove also increased a contempt fine against Jim Justice’s son, Jay Justice, and associate Stephen Ball, to $1,000 a day from $250 a day.

The original contempt order was issued after Jay Justice and Ball failed to comply with a 2021 discovery request from a federal magistrate judge.

Justice and Ball are also required to pay almost $200,000 in previously awarded attorney fees. The payment deadline was in October 2023, but the defendants claimed an inability to pay it.

Justice and Ball made a payment of $30,500 toward their contempt sanctions in October 2024.

“As the court has already identified,” Van Tatenhove wrote earlier this week, “this case has been marked by delay and obstruction on the part of the defendants.”

Last year, Kentucky Fuel was one of six Justice-owned companies another federal judge in Delaware ordered to be sold to satisfy a debt to a Caribbean investment company.

The Justice family owes Caroleng Investments, a subsidiary of the Russian mining company Mechel, more than $10 million.

Justice-owned companies are entangled in myriad lawsuits with multiple creditors involving tens of millions of dollars in debt.

Jim Justice, a two-term Republican governor of West Virginia, was elected to the U.S. Senate in November and took office last month.

This story was distributed by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky and NPR.