Greenbrier resort Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Jim Justice’s Children File Complaint Against Sale Of Greenbrier

Gov. Jim Justice’s children have filed a complaint in Greenbrier County Circuit Court in an attempt to halt the sale of the Greenbrier Hotel.

The hotel is currently scheduled to be sold next week.

Gov. Jim Justice’s children have filed a complaint in Greenbrier County Circuit Court in an attempt to halt the sale of the Greenbrier Hotel.

The hotel is currently scheduled to be sold next week.

Jill and James Justice say that the sale of the Greenbrier to a “cutthroat” debt collector was politically motivated and would cause economic harm to the region.

The complaint says aside from the motivations and effects of the sale of the property, there are three “fatal” legal defects in the foreclosure. The first two alleged defects are technical. They take issue with the way the public was notified for the sale, and who approved the latest deed of trust.

The third alleged flaw says that JP Morgan Chase, the original lender, went back on its word.

The Justices say that they had verbal agreements with Chase that if they sold some of their cottages at the Greenbrier resort and sold or refinanced the Glade Springs Resort by Sept. 30 and put that money towards the delinquent debt that they would avoid foreclosure.

They also claim they had a verbal agreement with Chase representatives for forbearance, which would allow them to temporarily stop making payments or make smaller payments.

“(Greenbrier Hotel Corporation, Jay Justice and Jill Justice) seek a declaratory judgment that the sale cannot proceed, a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, and ultimately a permanent injunction enjoying it,” the Justices said in the complaint.

The original loan was for $142 million. The terms of that loan have been revised since it was first taken by the Justices in 2014 according to a Chase court filing to New York’s Supreme Court.

In April, Chase sent out a formal letter putting the Justices on notice of the delinquent status of its loan.

“By giving notice contained herein, you should not in any way anticipate that any other notice not expressly required under the loan documents and the sixth amended forbearance agreement,” the April letter from Chase to the Justices said.

The Justices say that the sale of the property would likely have a negative impact on the economy of Greenbrier County, and a significant loss in jobs.

The complaint states that the resort employs 2,000 people during peak season.

Greenbrier employees received notice on Monday that they may lose their healthcare coverage, for reasons not directly related to the foreclosure of the Greenbrier. The Hotel is four months, and millions of dollars behind on payments. The Insurer said in a letter that even the money that the hotel had taken out of its employees checks for healthcare coverage had not been paid to the health care insurer.

They also contend that the sale of the debt to the debt collector was politically motivated, pointing out that if Jim Justice wins the U.S. Senate race in November, he could give the Republican Party majority control of the chamber.

Chase however is on the hook for millions of dollars in missed payments, and has no clear benefit in Justice losing the election.

“Less than seven weeks after his nomination, and after 14 years of doing business with Justice, JPMC with no notice or warning sold Justices loan to McCormick,” the complaint said.

McCormick 101, a Maryland debt collecting firm, currently owns the deed of trust to the property. Chase sold the debt and the deed of trust to the Greenbrier hotel after the Justices had defaulted on the loan.

The deed of trust is only to the hotel, and not to much of the property that surrounds the hotels including the separate cottages, the golf course- and part of the parking areas. The Justices says this uncoupling would render both halves inoperable.

“The sale would leave the Greenbrier without a place to park guests’ vehicles during its busy peak season. And all guests use water; the loss of the Greenbrier’s water supply would leave it unable to operate at all,” the Justices said in the complaint.

Greenbrier Employees Told They May Lose Health Insurance

The letter alleged that the Greenbrier has continued to deduct money from employee paychecks for health insurance, but that money hasn’t gone to the Health Fund. Now the health care company says if a payment is not made, it will stop providing coverage to all the Greenbrier’s employees.

Greenbrier Hotel employees were notified Monday that they may be losing their health care coverage next week due to nonpayment- even though they have been paying for it out of their checks.

According to a letter sent by a firm representing the health care company, the Greenbrier, owned by Gov. Jim Justice and his family, is four months delinquent in its contributions to the Health Fund. The firm is Schulte, Roth and Zabel’s division based out of New York.

“[The Greenbrier Owes] approximately $2.4 million in delinquent contributions with an additional $1.2 million in contributions currently, or soon to be,” the letter from Schulte, Roth and Zabel said.

The letter was addressed to the hotel, multiple labor unions, and the company’s CFO – who is also Justice’s son in law.

It alleged that the Greenbrier has continued to deduct money from employee paychecks for health insurance, but that money hasn’t gone to the Health Fund. Now the health care company says if a payment is not made, it will stop providing coverage to all the Greenbrier’s employees.

“If payment is not timely made, the Health Fund will suspend health and welfare coverage to all of the Greenbrier’s covered employees,” the letter said.

Peter Bostic, Chairperson of the Greenbrier Council of Labor Unions, says unions are pursuing every legal option available to seek a resolution for the Greenbrier employees.

“Greenbrier delinquency has put our members’ healthcare benefits in severe jeopardy and is morally and legally wrong. Our members have met their obligation by working hard every day and paying their portion to the Greenbrier,” Bostic said in a statement.

The Greenbrier is scheduled to be sold on the Greenbrier County courthouse steps next week to settle a delinquent loan.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting reached out to the Greenbrier Hotel Corporation, The CFO and Treasurer Adam C. Long, and the Firm Schulte, Roth and Zabel about this story. None of those entities has responded.

Justice Seeks $1 Billion In Damages From Lender To His Companies

Justice and his wife and son are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Carter Bank & Trust, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.

Gov. Jim Justice and several of his companies, including the Greenbrier Resort, have sued a Virginia bank that’s one of their biggest lenders.

Justice and his wife and son are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Carter Bank & Trust, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.

The Justices seek damages of $1 billion from Carter. The suit alleges that the bank engaged in a predatory scheme to prevent Justice’s companies from doing business with other banks.

It also alleges that Carter made the loans to Justice impossible to repay and that the interest on those loans were the bank’s biggest source of profit.

“Because of Carter’s significant control over their businesses,” the complaint states, “Plaintiffs have had little choice but to endure Carter’s oppression until they can escape it by paying off their loans.”

The suit says the relationship between the Justice companies and Carter fell apart after the 2017 death of the bank’s founder, Worth Carter.

By then, Justice had a portfolio of $740 million in loans with Carter to his coal, agriculture and hospitality businesses.

GOP Legislators Looking for a Winning Formula in 2018

Congressional Republicans have gathered at a West Virginia resort in search of a winning election-year agenda. The best they have to offer in 2018 may be a recitation of the tax cuts approved in 2017 — and the threat of another government shutdown is looming.

The legislators had forums on topics such as infrastructure, national security and the economy — but noticeably not on immigration, the major issue that bedevils them.

They got a pep talk from President Donald Trump reliving passage of the tax bill and highlighting other GOP victories from his first year in office. But the president offered no clear strategy for resolving the immigration-and-spending standoff that produced a three-day government shutdown in January and threatens a second shutdown next week. And he offered no new policy details on infrastructure, prescription drug prices or other items he’s mentioned as ripe for attention in 2018.

As for an immigration strategy, Trump said: “We have to get help from the other side, or we have to elect many more Republicans.” He then proceeded to take jabs at Democrats just days after calling for bipartisan unity in his State of the Union address.

Trump took a similar tack at a second GOP event Thursday night in Washington.

“You know the Democrats are AWOL. They’re missing in action,” Trump said at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting at his Washington hotel. “We’re saying, ‘Where are they?’ We have a proposal. We never hear from them.”

Republicans appear headed into the year with the idea that 2017 was when they got bigger items done and that 2018 will be a time to deal with necessary business, including spending and immigration. Infrastructure would likely require a sustained push from the president. The message for the midterms is expected to be the economy and tax cuts.

“Tax reform is working,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, citing investments by UPS and employee bonuses by Lowe’s as the latest evidence. Take-home pay is going up, while consumer confidence is at a 17-year high and unemployment at a 17-year low, Ryan said.

Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, gamely told reporters that Trump’s history as a developer makes him the ideal person to push a major infrastructure plan.

Shuster said public-private partnerships such as those used by Connecticut at highway rest stops could be an alternative. Raising the gas tax, a reliable source of funding for highways, is a tough sell with this Congress.

Trump mentioned a “right to try” bill to speed approval of life-saving drugs, but the plan received little or no buzz among lawmakers.

Besides tax cuts and the strong economy, Republicans said they have a not-so-secret weapon: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who said the GOP tax bill would provide mere “crumbs” for many taxpayers.

Trump compared the remark to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 description of his supporters as “deplorables,” and Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, chairman of the House campaign arm, said Pelosi’s words will be repeated in TV ads around the country.

“Her ‘crumbs’ comment is something I think we can use pretty effectively,” Stivers said.

Amid the optimism were nagging questions about whether lawmakers will enact immigration changes or deadlock over Trump’s calls for a wall along the Mexican border and a path to citizenship for young immigrants here illegally. Meanwhile Congress faces a Feb. 8 deadline to avert another government shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised that wouldn’t happen, saying, “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.”

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he doubted there will be a unified Republican approach on immigration, noting that House and Senate Republicans have vastly different visions on the bill. And while there was no formal immigration session on the agenda, Lankford and other lawmakers said the issue has come up frequently in informal talks among lawmakers.

“There’s a lot of dialogue happening in the hallway” on immigration, Lankford said, adding that he hopes the GOP will coalesce around a White House framework Trump outlined last week and reiterated during his State of the Union address.

The White House has proposed creating a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young people living in the county illegally in exchange for billions for a border wall and dramatic cuts to legal immigration. Democrats have blasted the plan and called it dead on arrival.

Trump claimed that if Democrats don’t agree to the immigration framework he’s presented, it will be because they want the issue to animate voters in the 2018 midterm elections.

“It’s now an election issue that will go to our benefit, not their benefit,” he said.

In Washington later, he said: “I don’t think they want to solve the DACA problem. I think they want to talk about it. I think they want to obstruct. … That’s all they do is resist.”

Hundreds Protest Trump Outside Greenbrier

President Donald Trump’s address to Republican congressmen at The Greenbrier resort in southern West Virginia drew several hundred protesters with signs and chants criticizing him and calling for living wages, protecting Medicaid and Medicare, defending immigrants and decrying hate speech.

Corralled by dozens of West Virginia State Police troopers, who blocked the entrances to the resort, the demonstrators marched more than a half-mile along White Sulphur Springs’ main street.

They generally kept to the sidewalk and listened to a handful of speakers allowed by troopers to set up outside the Greenbrier’s main gate. The crowd then dispersed back down the street to the buses and cars that brought them.

“It’s the entire GOP from my perspective. They put Trump in to advance their agenda,” said Arthur Blair, 68, from Silver Spring, Maryland. A social worker who worked with juveniles, he was disabled at 56 with bone degeneration, he has a 28-year-old son with schizophrenia is now getting along with medications and housing from federal programs, he said.

“They have Social Security under attack, and everything under Social Security … and Medicaid and Medicare that many people are in need of,” Blair said. He believes half the people broadly criticized in the U.S. by Republican politicians for not working have mental illnesses that prevent it.

Angus MacIvor and his wife, who came from nearby Lewisburg, carried a “No Hate in My Holler” sign made by a neighbor. The 71-year-old retiree said he used to think George W. Bush was the most damaging president he’s seen, but Bush at least seemed to like people and Trump doesn’t.

He faulted Trump for “the shame he’s brought on our country and the damage he’s doing to the poor and the dispossessed in our country.”

Protest organizers said the lavish Greenbrier’s estate location in West Virginia, a state with a high rate of enrollment in federal safety net programs, is symbolic. They said it’s the first in a month of planned actions in states where politicians want to impose work requirements for receiving Medicaid, including Kansas, Arkansas, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

About 525,000 of West Virginia’s nearly 1.8 million people are enrolled in Medicaid. Down the road from The Greenbrier, several storefronts have restaurants and small businesses. Some are empty.

Trump Says Republicans Had a Bumper Year

President Donald Trump used a speech before GOP lawmakers Thursday to pat fellow party members on the back and take digs at Democrats just days after calling for bipartisan unity.

Trump also urged the passage of an immigration framework that has been lambasted by Democrats and some members of his party, making clear that he sees no room for compromise.

Speaking to the House and Senate Republicans at their annual legislative retreat at the luxury Greenbrier Resort, Trump claimed his first year in office was “one of the greatest years in the history of politics, in the history of our country, for a party, what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished. I don’t think it’s been done.”

That’s despite a limited legislative record that includes a single, though sizable accomplishment: passage of the Republican tax bill.

Still, he said the party was unified like never before and claimed he’d now fulfilled “far more promises” than even he’d promised, dubbing his record: “promises plus.”

Days after calling on both parties to come together in his State of the Union speech, Trump criticized Democrats for the less than enthusiastic reception they’d given him on Capitol Hill.

“They sat there stone cold, no smile, no applause,” Trump said, suggesting that “perhaps they’d rather see us not do well than see our country do great. … We have to change that.”

Trump also urged those gathered to rally around a White House immigration proposal unveiled last week.

Trump said the plan, which would provide a path to citizenship for as many as 1.8 million young people living in the country illegally in exchange for money for his southern border wall and a major overhaul of the legal immigration system, represented the “center, mainstream view of the American people.”

Democrats have rejected the plan outright, accusing Trump of using the fight over “Dreamer” immigrants to push through a hyper-conservative immigration agenda, while some conservative Republicans have rejected it as “amnesty.”

But Trump claimed that, if Democrats don’t agree to the plan he’s presented, it will be because they want the issue to animate voters in the 2018 midterm elections.

“It’s now an election issue that will go to our benefit, not their benefit,” he said.

Hours earlier, Trump lashed out at Democrats on Twitter, castigating them for failing to support his agenda.

“They Resist, Blame, Complain and Obstruct – and do nothing,” he wrote.