Federal prosecutors say coal companies in the struggling business empire of Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., still owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in mine safety debt that has lingered since the 2010s.
Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., speaks during a Jan. 16, 2025 hearing on Capitol Hill.
Nearly two dozen Justice companies still owe just over $434,000 to the federal government after it received a $25,000 payment from them Monday, prosecutors said in a federal court filing Tuesday.
The debt remains on a $5.13 million sum the companies agreed to pay in 2020 to cover five years of unpaid Mine Safety and Health Administration civil penalties dating back to 2014.
Since the 2020 agreement, prosecutors have complained to a Virginia federal court that the Justice companies have been chronically late on payments. In August, they asked the U.S. District for the Western District of Virginia to hold the companies in civil contempt for their failure to pay.
At a motion hearing on their still pending request Thursday afternoon, an attorney representing the companies claimed the companies are insolvent, with only one, Tams Management Inc., attempting to operate, and none having an ability to pay.
“Quite frankly, my client would be upset if I said it, but I’m just going to say it anyway, these companies are insolvent, and probably, bankruptcy organization is long overdue,” Salem, Virginia-based attorney, Aaron Houchens, told the court.
Senior District Judge Michael Urbanski set an evidentiary hearing in the case for 9:30 a.m. Feb. 25 in Roanoke, Virginia, after saying the court lacked proof that the companies can’t pay the remaining debt.
“The defendant is simply saying we can’t pay because we have no money, or times are tight, and I’ve got no evidence,” Urbanski said. “I just have arguments. It seems to me that if I’m going to make a ruling on contempt and the defendant is claiming financial hardship as an excuse for nonpayment, then I need to hear some evidence. I just can’t take Mr. Houchens’ word for it.”
Prosecutors asked the court to find the companies in civil contempt in August, contending the firms knowingly failed to comply with their payment obligations under the 2020 agreement and a 2023 order from the Virginia court to comply with that agreement. The 2023 order required the companies pay over $409,000 in delinquent payments within 10 days after they failed to make required monthly payments from February through June of that year.
“Time and time again, the defendants have been a day late and a dollar short. Actually, they’ve been months late and hundreds of thousands of dollars short,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Krista Consiglio Frith said during Thursday’s motion hearing, recalling that the debt was due in full on March 1, 2024.
Urbanski asked the parties to send him a proposed protective order that would shield documents shared in their evidence-gathering process from public view after Houchens asked that the companies’ financial information not be made public.
But Urbanski warned Houchens that if the case progresses to an open court proceeding, any items submitted for decision-making purposes would be considered “presumptively public” documents.
Houchens cited a “political connection” to the case, alluding to Justice’s Senate seat won in November after two terms as West Virginia’s governor.
“I’m not going to even think about that, OK?” Urbanski responded. “I’m just not, and it’s not relevant. But what we have here is a number of corporations, regardless of who owns them, we have a number of corporations who made an agreement with the United States to pay these fines over time, and they owe the money.”
Urbanski noted “on the flipside” that the defendants had paid roughly $4.5 million of the $5.13 million debt.
“It seems to me in deciding whether they should be held in contempt, the court needs to take all of that into consideration,” Urbanski said.
Justices accounted for 13% of federal mine safety fine debt
In a July 2023 status report citing “financial difficulties” among the companies filed with the court, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the companies agreed to make weekly payments of $51,221 for 10 weeks to pay its past due balance.
But in August 2024, prosecutors asked the court to find the Justice companies in civil contempt, saying they still owed $579,041, five months after the debt was due in full, despite government reminders about their tardy and missing payments. Prosecutors said the companies were making an “attempt to escape” their financial obligations.
The prosecutors’ request for the court to hold the companies in civil contempt was pending until Thursday’s hearing.
Delinquent federal mine safety fines for mines controlled by the governor and his adult children, James C. “Jay” Justice III and Jillean Justice, comprised over 13% of total debt nationwide in August 2024, according to MSHA data.
Justice’s Senate communications director did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Long history of Justice mine safety violations
The Justice firms owed roughly $529,000 in September 2024, the prosecutors said in another filing that month, meaning the companies have paid off approximately $95,000 since then.
That $95,000 sum in a four-month span is much less than the monthly payments of $102,442 that were due on the first day of each month under the 2020 agreement.
Justice coal companies’ mine safety violations have grown as their collective debt has lingered.
The MSHA on Thursday announced it had issued 19 citations last month following an “impact inspection” at the Jay Justice-controlled Tams No. 1 Surface Mine in Raleigh County.
The MSHA reserves impact inspections for mines deemed in greater need of enforcement oversight due to poor compliance history, accidents or injuries.
Of the 19 citations issued for the Tams No. 1 Surface Mine, five were categorized as “Significant and Substantial,” a designation MSHA uses for hazards reasonably likely to result in serious injury.
The MSHA issued 20 federal safety and health violations responding to another Justice family mine impact inspection in July 2024. The agency found miners were exposed to a wide range of serious hazards at the Jay Justice-controlled Frontier Coal Co.’s Belcher Branch Mine in Wyoming County.
The MSHA said it issued an imminent danger order the first day of that impact inspection after finding a hot and smoking tail pulley bearing on a belt conveyor.
Miners were immediately removed from the mine to protect them from imminent fire and explosion hazards, according to the MSHA, which added that other conveyor bearings also were overheating in the mine, prompting more unwarrantable failure orders.
The Justice companies’ mine safety fine debts — consistently among the nation’s highest such totals — have contributed to hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and other legal liabilities mounting across the governor’s personal and business finances.
Justice’s companies have allowed intermittent lapses in prescription drug coverage that have endangered the health of retirees and their dependents in recent years.
Virginia-based Carter Bank scheduled an auction of Greenbrier Sporting Club property last year to help satisfy a nine-figure Justice family debt to the bank.
The auction was later canceled, and the Justice family and the bank announced the settlement of the dispute, in which the bank has sought $300 million-plus in debt admitted by the Justices.
The Justice family’s Greenbrier Hotel Corp. was accused in Aug. 2024 of being four months delinquent in contributions to a health insurance fund serving union workers by the Greenbrier Council of Labor Unions, with health benefits set to expire at the end of last month. The group of unions announced Aug. 29 that a settlement agreement was reached between the health fund and the company.
Last year, federal marshals seized a helicopter owned by Justice’s Bluestone Resources Inc. in response to Bluestone not paying any of a roughly $13 million 2021 judgment against it.
