CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia State Supreme Court Justice Margaret Workman cited Massey Energy's "extensive pattern of fraudulent conduct" in a strongly worded dissent released Monday in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
The justice also criticized the majority opinion, written by Justice Robin Davis, for a "lack of sound legal reasoning and its result-driven approach."
Workman was the sole dissenter in a 4-1 decision that overturned a multimillion-dollar verdict against Massey and for Harman Mining and its owner, Hugh Caperton. The decision, issued Nov. 12, was the third time the state Supreme Court had voted to overturn the verdict.
The original verdict from a Boone County jury in August 2002 awarded $50 million to Caperton and Harman, and would have been worth more than $80 million with interest.
Workman's dissent discussed Massey's conduct after taking over a 10-year contract Harman had to supply coal, through Wellmore Coal Corp., to LTV Corp.'s Pittsburgh steelmaking operations.
After buying Wellmore, Massey began supplying coal for the LTV contract from its own mines in Boone County.
Workman's dissent focused on Massey's "fraudulent, bad-faith negotiations" with Caperton in late 1997 and early 1998.
Those negotiations, she wrote, "lured Caperton and the Harman Companies into a false sense of security, thereby deterring them from seeking other buyers for their coal."
| Between November 1997 and January 1998, Caperton "provided Massey with confidential business information, including mine maps, reserve studies, drill information" and Harman's "plans to expand into adjoining reserves owned by Pittston Coal."
| After Massey "represented" to Caperton it would purchase Harman's coal leases with Pittston, Caperton agreed to "shut down the Harman Companies' operations on Jan. 19, 1998."
| But after Harman closed its operations -- 12 days before Massey's proposed date to close the sale on Jan. 31 -- Massey stopped negotiating and the deal collapsed.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia State Supreme Court Justice Margaret Workman cited Massey Energy's "extensive pattern of fraudulent conduct" in a strongly worded dissent released Monday in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
The justice also criticized the majority opinion, written by Justice Robin Davis, for a "lack of sound legal reasoning and its result-driven approach."
Workman was the sole dissenter in a 4-1 decision that overturned a multimillion-dollar verdict against Massey and for Harman Mining and its owner, Hugh Caperton. The decision, issued Nov. 12, was the third time the state Supreme Court had voted to overturn the verdict.
The original verdict from a Boone County jury in August 2002 awarded $50 million to Caperton and Harman, and would have been worth more than $80 million with interest.
Workman's dissent discussed Massey's conduct after taking over a 10-year contract Harman had to supply coal, through Wellmore Coal Corp., to LTV Corp.'s Pittsburgh steelmaking operations.
After buying Wellmore, Massey began supplying coal for the LTV contract from its own mines in Boone County.
Workman's dissent focused on Massey's "fraudulent, bad-faith negotiations" with Caperton in late 1997 and early 1998.
Those negotiations, she wrote, "lured Caperton and the Harman Companies into a false sense of security, thereby deterring them from seeking other buyers for their coal."
| Between November 1997 and January 1998, Caperton "provided Massey with confidential business information, including mine maps, reserve studies, drill information" and Harman's "plans to expand into adjoining reserves owned by Pittston Coal."
| After Massey "represented" to Caperton it would purchase Harman's coal leases with Pittston, Caperton agreed to "shut down the Harman Companies' operations on Jan. 19, 1998."
| But after Harman closed its operations -- 12 days before Massey's proposed date to close the sale on Jan. 31 -- Massey stopped negotiating and the deal collapsed.
| "After collapsing the deal," Workman wrote, Massey used the confidential information it obtained from Harman to purchase "a narrow band of coal surrounding the Harman Companies' reserves from Pittston." That purchase effectively prevented any other company from buying Harman's assets.
The state Supreme Court's majority opinion, Workman wrote, refused to "acknowledge the gravity of Massey's foregoing conduct" that "directly caused ... the complete financial demise" of Caperton and Harman.
By overturning the Boone County verdict, the Supreme Court eliminated almost any hope Harman creditors might have had for financial recovery in the wake of Harman's 1998 bankruptcy filing.
"Not least among those creditors," Workman wrote, are "union miners who lost their jobs as a result of Massey's fraudulent conduct and ... hundreds of retirees to whom [Harman] previously paid pensions and medical benefits."
The United Mine Workers union, which represented Harman's miners, filed more than $15.8 million in bankruptcy claims.
After the Supreme Court's first ruling in favor of Massey, lawyers for Harman and Caperton produced photos that showed Massey chief executive Don Blankenship and then-Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard on vacation together in Europe.
Maynard recused himself, as did then-Justice Larry Starcher, who had publicly criticized Blankenship. The court voted for a second time to overturn the verdict against Massey, but lawyers for Harman and Caperton argued that Chief Justice Brent Benjamin should have recused himself because Blankenship spent more than $3 million to help elect him in 2004.
In a 5-4 decision earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Benjamin should have recused himself, then it returned the case to the West Virginia Supreme Court, leading to the latest ruling.
Monday's dissent marks the second time in recent weeks that Workman has released a strong dissent in a Massey-related case. On Nov. 19, she dissented from a 4-1 opinion that said e-mails between Maynard and Blankenship should not be made public. In that dissent, Workman also criticized the majority opinion written by Davis, calling her reasoning "unhelpful and misleading."
In both cases, Justices Thomas McHugh and Menis Ketchum sided with Davis.
Reach Paul J. Nyden at pjny...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5164.
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I guess you'll want me to prove winter follows fall and night follows day next.
DA
If you don't like the Gazette, pal, the corporate-coal-aid version is always on tap over at the Daily Flail.
http://www.dailymail.com/News/200912010281
Until, of course, they go belly up due to the lack of readers.
My point which (which is valid) is that part of the reason the Supreme Court got involved and chose to hear the case was the inspiration Grisham derived from the Benjamin election, at least according to GMA. That is a fact.
And I read part of the majority opinion. I was merely pointing out the slanted bias of this paper. Am I wrong?
After all, this is the same paper that took op-ed space and attacked Faux News for being bias and portrayed their paper as one that does not allow their op-ed page to bleed over into their reporting.
So once again, am I wrong in my assessment of this situation?