A federal judge in Kentucky has ordered companies owned by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice to pay more than $1 million in fees and expenses in a lawsuit that accused them of defaulting on a mining contract.
U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove denied a motion by the James C. Justice Cos. Inc. and subsidiary Kentucky Fuel Corp. to reconsider the case and to conduct oral arguments. Van Tatenhove in September ordered the companies to pay $35 million to the New London Tobacco Market and Five Mile Energy.
Nearly all of the fees and expenses will be paid to the law firms for the plaintiffs and the rest will go to the plaintiffs, according to Van Tatenhove’s order Friday.
In addition, the judge ordered Lexington, Kentucky attorney Richard Getty and his firm, who represented Justice’s companies, to pay $10,000 to the plaintiffs within 30 days and warned Getty “not to present misleading and frivolous arguments to the Court in the future.”
The 2012 lawsuit accused the Justice companies of failing to pay mining royalty payments and retainer fees. Van Tatenhove said in his order that the lengthy case had already involved a three-day evidentiary hearing on damages alone.
“Defendants apparently equate ‘due process’ with success on the merits. Nothing is fair unless decided in their favor,” the judge wrote. “Defendants began this litigation with the same opportunities for discovery and presentation of evidence as any other litigant, but they have squandered these opportunities with poor strategic decisions and contumacious, combative conduct.”
Getty sought to reconsider the September order under a “rule 59” motion, but Tatenhove said such motions can only be granted if there was a clear error of law, newly discovered evidence, a change in controlling law or to prevent injustice.
The judge said the rule “is not an opportunity to re-argue a case.”
“Defendant’s persistence on this point calls to mind the mythological Hydra — it feels as though every time the Court addresses this argument in one motion, it appears again in two others.”
Justice has a net worth of more than $1 billion. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors said Justice’s coal companies agreed to pay more than $5 million for thousands of mine safety violations.
Coal companies owned by the family of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice have agreed to pay more than $5 million in overdue mine health and safety fines and fees.
According to a press release released Wednesday, a total of 24 coal companies owned by the Justice family agreed to settle millions of dollars in unpaid penalties and fines owed to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA.
The fines stemmed from nearly 3,000 citations issued to Justice mine operators between May 2014 and May 2019 under the federal Mine Safety and Health Act.
The civil lawsuit, brought by U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, alleged 23 Justice coal companies located in five states — Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky — owed more than $5 million in delinquent debts.
In the release, Cullen said the Justice-owned companies agreed to pay all outstanding debts and penalties associated with their mine safety violations.
“It is our hope that this landmark collection action and settlement agreement sends a clear message that the Department of Justice will aggressively pursue mine safety violations and hold owners and operators accountable,” Cullen said.
In total, the Justice companies will pay $4,065,578.29 to satisfy the debts identified in the original lawsuit. In addition, another Justice company, Bluestone Coal Corporation, also agreed to pay $1,064,547.18 for other unpaid fines and fees.
The original 23 companies in the settlement include: Southern Coal Corporation, Justice Coal of Alabama, A&G Coal Corporation, Black River Coal, Chestnut Land Holdings, Double Bonus Coal Company, Dynamic Energy, Four Star Resources, Frontier Coal Company, Infinity Energy, Justice Energy Company, Justice Highwall Mining, Kentucky Fuel Corporation, Keystone Service Industries, M&P Services, Nine Mile Mining, Nufac Mining Company, Pay Car Mining; Premium Coal Company, S and H Mining, Sequoia Energy, Tams Management and Virginia Fuel Corporation.
Standing at an overlook on the top of Black Mountain — the tallest point in Kentucky — the wooded Appalachian mountains stretch on like a sea of green for miles.
For many, this mountain is synonymous with the coal industry. It straddles the state line separating Harlan County, Kentucky and Wise County, Virginia, two communities that have long relied on mining the black gold contained in its depths.
Among the lush forests, barren, brown spots dot the landscape, a testament to this history. These are coal mines, created when the tops of these mountains were removed. From the top of Black Mountain, one sprawling mine and its towering high wall dominate the view.
“So, we are looking currently looking at Looney Ridge surface mine number one,” says Matt Hepler, an environmental scientist with the advocacy group Appalachian Voices.
Hepler has for years been following action, or lack thereof, at the Looney Ridge mine, which is operated by A&G Coal, a coal company run by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Matt Hepler of the advocacy group Appalachian Voices.
Coal has not been produced here since at least 2013 when A&G Coal asked Virginia regulators to place the mine in what is called temporary cessation. The permit status allows mining to pause, giving mining companies flexibility on requirements for land reclamation until it becomes more economically feasible to begin extracting coal again. And, as the name implies, this idling of mines is supposed to be temporary.
An analysis of mine permit data conducted by the Center for Public Integrity finds Central Appalachia is home to about half of all idled coal mines in the country. CPI found more than 200 mines are idled across West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. About half have been that way for three or more years. Warehousing mines using this permit status throws workers and nearby communities into limbo all while crucial environmental cleanup is delayed.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
The analysis shows that the Justice companies are the nation’s most frequent users of coal mine idling. Thirty-three mines and a coal preparation plant owned by the Justice family’s companies were idled as of mid-August. Fifteen of those have been in that status for at least three years, according to CPI’s analysis. In West Virginia, one Justice mine in McDowell County has been idled for almost a decade.
That number doesn’t include the Looney Ridge mine or others nearby in Virginia where coal also hasn’t been mined for years. That’s because in early 2014, state mining regulators entered into a compliance agreement with the Justices to force them to reclaim the site.
Hepler, with Appalachian Voices, said that agreement has not resulted in much actual reclamation. The Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy has amended the compliance agreement multiple times.
“It’s looked like this for as long as I’ve been coming up here,” he said, pointing to the same broken-down bulldozer that has been there for years.
Tarah Kesterson, a spokesperson with the Virginia DMME, said the agency is pushing the Justices to clean up the site and is actively monitoring the situation as well as conducting inspections.
“We are doing everything within our enforcement authority to ensure that this gets done,” she said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Justice companies defended the reclamation work and said idling permits is a standard practice across the industry.
But as the nation shifts away from coal toward more economic options for power generation, such as natural gas and renewable energy, some fear the use of mine idling can be used as a stepping stone to abandon mines, passing the responsibility for cleanup to the government and taxpayers.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Unreclaimed mine land on Looney Ridge, near the KY/VA border.
Community Impact
Idle mines, especially those left untouched for years at a time, can negatively affect the economy, health, and environment of nearby communities.
“When mines become inactive or idle, they starve a local community, and they deprive the community of the coal mining jobs and other related jobs,” said Joe Pizarchik, former head of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the federal agency in charge of regulating surface coal mines, during the Obama administration.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
When mines enter temporary cessation employment plummets. CPI’s analysis found coal operations that have been idled for at least three years had 85 percent fewer full-time employees after switching into idle status than they did a year before.
“It also puts that land in a totally non-productive state,” Pizarchik said. “It’s not making money on anything for anybody for the community, and it can be a potential pollution source.”
In addition to being unsightly, there are health and safety risks associated with leaving mines unreclaimed, said Emily Bernhardt an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist and professor at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Mines left idled can expose residents to coal and silica dust. They can also pose a risk for landslides and flooding. During surface coal mining, operators pile tons of rock and liquid behind earthen dams. When left idle, those impoundments face a greater likelihood of failing.
“You can’t actually make any improvements when you’re just sort of on hold,” Bernhardt said.
Who Pays?
Federal regulators have made two attempts since the 1990s to reform the way temporary cessation is used, according to public records obtained by CPI. Both have stalled. That’s despite a 2010 survey of state regulators that showed most states believed there should be limits on how long mines could be idled.
Federal law only requires that mining companies notify regulators when a permit will be in temporary cessation longer than 30 days.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Black Mtn. holds both natural beauty and scars of resource extraction
State regulators can reject applications to change mines to an idled status if they find noncompliance or ongoing pollution. Kesterson with the Virginia DMME said before an operator can apply for temporary cessation, reclamation must be up to date. In Kentucky and Virginia, inspections continue while a mine is idled, and operators are fined if violations are found.
While in the past, mine operators may have used idling to pause production to allow coal prices to rebound, Pizarchik worries the nation’s shift away from coal means the chances of idled mines being cleaned up are shrinking.
“I believe it’s extremely unlikely that those mines will ever be activated again because the price of coal is never going to go up,” he said. “The demand is only going to continue to shrink.”
If operators walk away from idled mines, states could face challenges with mine reclamation depending on how coal mine bonds are regulated, and that could leave taxpayers on the hook for paying for reclamation.
While Virginia is moving away from allowing coal operators to “self-bond” — or not put up a cash bond or buy a bond from an insurance firm if a company is deemed to be in good financial health — some A&G Coal permits remain self-bonded, Kesterson said. That means if the company were to go under, the state would get none of the money required for cleanup.
The state has in the past allowed coal companies to pay only partial bond amounts into a shared pool. The bond pool is meant to supplement cleanup for more than 150 permits, but the pool has less than $10 million cash.
“The reclamation would cost more than what we have in a pool bond,” Kesterson said of liabilities owed by A&G Coal. “So that’s why we’re trying to work with them, to get them to pay for the reclamation.”
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Not all states are concerned. John Mura, spokesperson for the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, said in an email that only 10 percent of Kentucky’s coal mines, or 150 permits, are in temporary cessation.
CPI’s analysis examined federal MSHA data on idled mining permits and is likely an undercount of idled mines because state and federal data are incomplete and often not comparable.
Mura said that following an order in 2011 by OSMRE to reform the state bonding program, base bond amounts have increased by about 60 percent.
“Kentucky has made great strides to ensure that reclamation bonds are adequate to complete reclamation in the event of bond forfeiture,” he said.
As the industry contracts, more bankruptcies are likely, which can open the door for companies to walk away from mines where buyers can’t be found.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
A truck enters a mine belonging to the now-bankrupt Revelation Energy.
That’s one concern currently playing out with the Blackjewel LLC bankruptcy, which has left more than 1,000 miners in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia without their last paychecks.
CPI’s analysis found Blackjewel and other subsidiaries owned by former CEO Jeff Hoops had 21 coal mines and related facilities temporarily idled as of mid-August, according to Mine Safety and Health Administration data, and seven of those had been paused for at least three years. Many of those mines have not been purchased since Blackjewel’s bankruptcy.
At least 16 additional operations owned by other companies in bankruptcy sit in idle status, all of them in Central Appalachia, according to federal data.
“Raped Out Mountains”
Retired coal miner and mine inspector Larry Bush knows firsthand how idle mines can impact the environment.
Bush lives below two Justice mines — one that is active and Looney Ridge. Sitting under a covered gazebo at a park in the town of Appalachia, Virginia, where he has lived almost his whole life, Bush said he sees the environmental toll unreclaimed mines can have on the environment.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Former miner Larry Bush lives near two large coal mines in Virginia.
“There’s a little stream that’s pretty much filled up with silt,” he said. “Nothing can live in it. I mean, there’s nothing, I don’t think.”
The 70-year-old Vietnam veteran is soft-spoken and sports a pair of reflective aviator glasses.
Bush wants to see this region rebound as the coal industry declines, but he struggles to see how that can happen with idled mines marking the landscape.
“If they’re not actively employing people, or actively working the site, they should be forced to do their reclamation work instead of just leaving raped out mountains,” he says.
This story was produced in partnership withHigh Country News and theCenter for Public Integrity. CPI’s Mark Olalde contributed reporting and Joe Yerardi produced CPI’s data analysis.
Coal companies controlled by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice have agreed to a settlement covering millions of dollars in overdue property taxes in four eastern Kentucky counties: Harlan, Knott, Magoffin, and Pike.
Checks totaling $1.2 million from Justice entities began rolling in last week, county officials said. According to state officials, the checks cover half the delinquent debt owed. Counties will receive the remaining amount in payments over the next six months.
Property taxes, which dwindled as the region’s coal industry declined, are used to fund essential services such as schools, fire departments, sheriff’s offices and libraries. County officials say the unpaid taxes from the Justice companies forced layoffs and added to hardships in an economically struggling region.
NPR, The Ohio Valley ReSource, and its partner stations reported in 2016 that the Justice companies had failed to pay more than $15 million in taxes and mine safety penalties in five states. Since then, the Justice companies have entered agreements to pay overdue taxes in West Virginia and, now, Kentucky. Federal prosecutors have also sued to recover millions in mine safety fines.
In a press release Monday, Kentucky Finance Cabinet Secretary William Landrum billed the agreement as a win.
“This settlement means the state and these counties no longer have to spend time, money and other resources on lawsuits that could take many years with no guarantee that the taxes would be paid,” Landrum said in the news release.
The agreement covers delinquent property taxes owed by three Justice family coal companies: Kentucky Fuels, Inc., Sequoia Energy, LLC, and A & G Coal, Inc. In exchange, suspensions sought by the Kentucky Department of Revenue on active mining licences issued to Kentucky Fuels will be lifted.
County officials, some of whom have fought the Justice organization in court to seek delinquent taxes, expressed mixed feelings about the settlement.
A representative for the Harlan County attorney’s office said Justice’s Sequoia Energy owes $141,179.36 in delinquent property taxes. Last week, the office received a check for about $93,000.
Pike County officials said last week Kentucky Fuels paid $177,497.10 to cover its 2017 and 2018 tax bills. The company owes about $252,000 in taxes from 2015 and 2016. Officials expect to receive six monthly payments of about $30,000, according to Tonnie Keene with the Pike County Attorney’s office.
“For us to collect that much money, that’s a good sum of money,” she said. “It’s paid off several years.”
Keene said it’s unclear if the county will have to write off any of the remaining debt after the six-month payment plan is completed.
“We won’t know until all these payments apply,” she said.
Pike County attorney Howard Keith Hall said he agreed to waive the penalties and interest for the amount covered in the settlement because it was a relatively small amount. Fees and penalties fund the county attorney office’s budget. He said over the years, Pike County collected more than $1.3 million from the Justice organization.
“We’re unique in that we’ve been able to collect so much,” Hall said.
“In a bad way”
Knott County, Kentucky, was home to one of the larger Kentucky Fuels properties and had perhaps the most at stake with the delinquent tax bills, which totaled roughly $2 million according to an official in the county clerk’s office.
The rural county lacks other large sources of revenue and depends heavily on coal severance and property taxes to pay for schools, public safety and other services. Without the Kentucky Fuels payment the school system faced a shortfall and several county employees were laid off.
“We ended up having to let a couple of our deputies go,” Knott County Sheriff Dale Richardson said in a March interview. “We only had five full-time deputies and we’re down to three. That puts that much more burden on us and it really puts us in a bad way.”
Richardson said the situation is more galling because it was not the first time the county had to hound the Justice companies for payment. Officials had filed suit twice before against Kentucky Fuels and even moved to seize some company property to recover debts.
“It’s not these people’s first rodeo,” Richardson said.
Assistant County Attorney Randy Slone said the county received a check of roughly $818,000 and that the company has pledged to make monthly payments to cover the other half of what was owed for outstanding tax debt.
But Slone noted that he has heard such promises before from the Justice companies.
“They have had agreements and not lived up to those,” he said. “But we are hopeful and we have not given up any rights, if they don’t comply we still have all the rights we had before.”
Slone said the delay in payment already caused considerable hardship for Knott County.
“At the end of the day we all have tax obligations whether you’re a billionaire or a regular Joe like me.”
Gov. Justice has an estimated worth of more than $1 billion and owned the luxury Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia in addition to the family mining companies. Since taking office he turned control of the companies to his daughter and son.
Justice v. Justices
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Damage to a road near a Justice company mine in Kentucky.
The Kentucky tax settlement agreement is the latest in a string of recent legal actions concerning the Justice companies’ tax debts, business debts, and failure to pay mine safety fines.
Federal prosecutors said depositions with company officials, including the governor’s son, revealed that Justice Energy was a shell company controlled by the Justices. Prosecutors argued the Justices were, in practice, the company and should pay the fine. On Friday, another Justice-controlled company, Bluestone Resources, Inc., stepped in to pay the penalty. The Justice Department agreed to drop the motion, but retains the right to revive it if Bluestone Resources fails to pay the fine.
In April, the Justice Dept. filed suit on behalf of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration to recover $4.7 million in delinquent penalties from the Justice mining companies for unpaid mine safety violations. That action came one month after a data analysis by the ReSource showed that the Justice companies’ mine safety debts had grown by more than 50 percent since Gov. Justice took office. The Justice companies have the highest delinquent mine safety debt in the U.S.
The Justice companies are also in a long-running dispute with state and federal regulators regarding penalties for failure to repair old surface mines in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. One such mine in eastern Kentucky has been the scene of repeated flooding and mudslides which have damaged neighboring properties and roads.
The ReSource’s Jeff Young contributed to this report.
Federal prosecutors have agreed to drop a motion seeking to hold West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and his son, Jay Justice, personally accountable for a $1.23 million civil penalty levied against one of the family’s coal businesses, Justice Energy Company, Inc.
In an order filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, attorneys for Justice Energy proposed that another Justice company, Bluestone Resources, Inc., will pay the fine.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia Mike Stuart in a court filing last week said after deposing company executives, including the governor’s son, federal prosecutors concluded the Justices were in practice “the alter egos” for the company and should be required to pay the fine.
In a statement regarding the settlement, Bluestone Resources CEO Tom Lusk expressed gratitude toward the U.S. attorney’s office and said “despite this disproportional penalty, the Justice Family has once again stepped up to pay an obligation.”
The Friday order, signed by U.S. District Judge Irene Berger, lays out a timeline for Bluestone Resources to pay the $1.23 million fine, which stems from a 2013 case over unpaid business debts to Virginia-based James River Equipment.
The company sued Justice Energy to recover roughly $150,000 in unpaid fees for mining equipment, services and parts. Two years after being ordered to pay the debt, and after company representatives repeatedly failed to show up for court hearings, Berger held Justice Energy in contempt of court to the tune of $30,000 per day, totaling $1.23 million. Justice Energy appealed the fines, but lostin 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last August.
Under the new order, Bluestone Resources will make three, $410,000 payments to satisfy the civil fine on behalf of Justice Energy.
The U.S. attorney’s office retains the right to refile the “alter ego” motion should Bluestone Resources fail to make the payments, according to the order.
In apparent anticipation of a federal lawsuit seeking recovery of overdue penalties, coal companies owned by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice have filed a lawsuit of their own against federal surface mining regulators.
The suit, first reported by WV MetroNews, is an apparent preemptive strike against the federal government, which is preparing to sue the companies over over unpaid fines associated with more than 100 environmental and reclamation violations at mines in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.
According to lawsuit, negotiations between officials from the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining, Enforcement and Reclamation (OSMRE) and the Justice companies, including the governor’s son, Jay Justice, to settle unpaid fines abruptly fell apart earlier this month.
The Justice companies contend the civil lawsuit by MSHA and the Justce Department was surprising, and argue in the newly-filed litigation that it may have pushed officials at the OSMRE to back away from a proposed $250,000 settlement agreement.
However, in a May 15, 2019 letter to lawyers representing the Justice companies that was included in the lawsuit, John Austin, the field solicitor in the Department of Interior’s Knoxville office, wrote that the believed settlement, and any settlement over $100,000, could not be approved without approval from the Justice Department.
“Therefore, notwithstanding your clients’ assertion about a deal they believe they made with OSMRE, there is not nor has there been an authorized agreement with the United States to settle the monetary debts of your clients for $250,000.00, or for any other amount,” Austin wrote.
The lawsuit describes a month-long effort by representatives from the Justice companies to settle fines from more than 100 violations at Justice mines dating back to 2017 as well as fines assessed against Jay Justice personally. The dollar amounts of the fines associated with the violations were redacted in the lawsuit.
Problem Properties
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Ohio Valley ReSource
The October flood damaged the road near the Thacker house.
Unreclaimed mines can present hazards to public safety and property for those living nearby.
In October 2018, floodwaters washed away the road to Elvis and Laura Thacker’s home, located about a quarter-mile downhill from the mine, trapping them inside. A similar June 2016 flood caused mold and about $148,000 in damages.
Despite a history of reclamation violations and complaints by residents, the mine, owned by Justice-controlled Kentucky Fuel Corp., remains the subject of a years-long dispute between the Justice family and regulatory agencies.
Last fall, Kentucky officials said the the Justice companies owed $2.9 million in reclamation penalties. Representatives for Kentucky Fuel Corp. dispute the amount and say they have made significant progress addressing violations at Bevins Branch.
Still, last October, OSMRE issued an immediate harm cessation order for the site, and Bevins Branch appears to be one of the mines with unpaid fines included in the new lawsuit.
Timeline
According to the suit, on April 8, 2019, Jay Justice and Justice Mining Entities COO Tom Lusk met with Michael Castle, the field office director of the OSMRE Knoxville and Lexington field offices and OSMRE official Mark Snyder in Knoxville.
During the meeting, according to the lawsuit, Jay Justice proposed that his companies would prioritize completing mine reclamation work “in lieu of the penalty assessments and that the penalty assessments be reduced by the cost of the reclamation work.”
According to the document, Castle, with OSMRE, said that because the delinquent mines were not currently operational and “the companies are not obtaining any financial benefit through non-compliance” he believed he had the authority to create a settlement agreement.
The group agreed that if the total amount of penalties owed was not reduced below $250,000 after this reclamation work, the Justice companies would pay that amount over a year to satisfy the remaining debt.
Later that day, the parties returned for a second meeting, this time with their lawyers present, including Austin, DOI’s field solicitor based in Knoxville. Austin asked the Justice companies to provide collateral that they could satisfy the agreement, to which the Justice companies agreed.
Later, at another meeting, the question of whether the Justice companies would need to provide collateral was left unresolved, according to the lawsuit.
Justice company representatives said they left the April meetings believing an agreement was in place. They said a letter to Austin sent in late April, invited him to ask for any additional financial information from the Justice companies, went unanswered.
During that time, the Justice companies said they began doing reclamation work.
“In the week of May 6, 2019, the government’s attitude toward the Justice Mining Entities noticeably soured,” the lawsuit states. That week, MSHA and the Justice Department filed a lawsuit seeking $4.7 million in unpaid mine health and safety fines and fees from the Justices.
Days later, after agreeing to “suddenly renewed” requests for collateral and more financial information from the Justice companies, the lawsuit states they received the May 15 letter from Austin stating that the settlement agreement had not been made. Instead, he wrote that a letter authorizing the DOJ to file suit against the Justice companies on behalf of the Interior Department had been issued.
“We have suggested on more than one occasion that a showing of good faith will benefit your clients if they intend to pursue settlement,” Austin wrote, adding that includes the Justice companies “continuing to abate the environmental violations that exist in Tennessee and by making good on a settlement agreement negotiated on their behalf in 2017.”
A request for comment to OSMRE was referred to the Justice Department, which did not immediately reply.
In a statement from Justice company Bluestone Coal Corp., Jay Justice said the companies are still seeking a settlement agreement with the federal government, but the “incident with MSHA” made an impression.
“We don’t want to have to go to court to get the government to do the right thing and live up to its end of the bargain, but we can’t sit back and let the government take advantage of our good faith efforts to resolve this matter,” he said.
Pattern of Behavior
The Justice companies have a documented history of racking up mine safety fines, failing to pay taxes, and inadequately completing reclamation work.
The companies have also repeatedly failed to pay suppliers. A review of court documents by the Ohio Valley ReSource last fall found at least five cases in which judges ruled that Justice family companies failed to pay suppliers for goods or services. When compelled by courts to pay, the companies either refused or failed to meet agreed upon payments.
These cases, dating back to 2013, include a failure to pay for a range of common coal industry needs, such as parts for mining equipment, coal barge services, insurance, and the royalties due to mineral property owners. The debts the Justice family companies owed in these cases ranged from just under $150,000 to a little more than $3 million.
In all five cases the courts authorized U.S. Marshals to seize assets from the Justice family companies’ bank accounts in order to recover the debts. However, in some cases officials discovered the bank accounts were empty or closed.
