A coal company owned by U.S. Sen. Jim Justice has appealed a federal district court’s order last month to pay millions in a Kentucky lawsuit.
Attorneys for Justice’s son, Jay Justice, and an associate filed their appeal this week in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Appeals Court in Cincinnati.
In July, U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove ordered Jay Justice and Stephen Ball to pay $18 million in a 2012 lawsuit filed by New London Tobacco Market and Fivemile Energy.
Those companies accused Justice-owned Kentucky Fuel of breach of contract and fraud for failure to pay mine royalties and retainer fees.
Van Tatenhove ordered Justice and Ball to pay the royalties, plus interest, as well as the penalties and interest he previously imposed.
On July 1, Van Tatenhove became the dean of the University of Kentucky School of Law.
Jim Justice, a West Virginia Republican, was elected to the Senate in 2024 after serving two terms as the state’s governor.
Justice-owned companies are involved in numerous federal lawsuits in multiple states over hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and fees he owes various creditors and state and federal agencies.
In the Kentucky Fuel case, Jay Justice and Ball paid about $30,000 toward the penalties they owed at the time, then claimed they were in compliance and asked Van Tatenhove to vacate the sanctions he previously placed on them.
Instead, Van Tatenhove increased the nonpayment penalty from $250 to $1,000 a day. In total, Justice and Ball owe more than $1 million in penalties and interest, plus an additional $17 million in damages to New London and Fivemile.
This isn’t the first time the case has been appealed to the Sixth Circuit. In two separate appeals in 2022, the same three-judge panel ruled that the district court could impose sanctions on the defendants. It also ruled that the plaintiffs could not collect punitive damages but sent the case back to the district court for further review.
