CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, deep in the midst of a U.S. Senate race, can also be in a mad-dash legal fight to maintain a historic West Virginia lodge at his luxurious resort earlier than it’s auctioned off subsequent week resulting from unpaid money owed.
Round 400 staff at well-known The Greenbrier lodge obtained a letter Monday from an lawyer representing well being care supplier Amalgamated Nationwide Well being Fund saying they are going to lose protection Aug. 27 except the governor’s household pays $2.4 million in lacking contributions, Peter Bostic of the Employees United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board mentioned Tuesday.
The protection would finish the day the lodge is ready to go to public sale, which Justice household attorneys have requested a choose to cease. They argue partly the public sale would hurt the economic system and threaten lots of of jobs.
The Justice household hasn’t made contributions to staff’ well being fund in 4 months, and an extra $1.2 million in contributions will quickly be due, in line with the letter from Ronald Richman, an lawyer with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, the agency representing the Amalgamated Nationwide Well being Fund.
The letter additionally mentioned that some contributions have been taken out of staff’ paychecks however by no means transferred to the well being fund, which involved union officers.
“We’re heartbroken and dissatisfied to be taught that The Greenbrier Resort, regardless of its contractual and authorized obligation to take action, has develop into severely delinquent to our Well being Insurance coverage provider,” Bostic mentioned in an announcement. “The Greenbrier’s delinquency has put our member’s Well being Care advantages in extreme jeopardy and is morally and legally unsuitable.”
The letter was first reported on by RealWV, a information web site run by former Democratic state Sen. Stephen Baldwin. Democrat Glenn Elliott, Justice’s opponent within the U.S. Senate race and the previous mayor of Wheeling, wrote on the social media platform X that Justice’s “sense of entitlement to issues that aren’t his is limitless and indefensible.”
Justice, who owns dozens of corporations and had a internet value estimated at $513 million by Forbes Journal in 2021, has been accused in numerous court cases of being late in paying hundreds of thousands for household enterprise money owed and fines for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.
He started serving the primary of his two phrases as governor in 2017, after shopping for The Greenbrier out of chapter in 2009. The lodge has hosted U.S. presidents, royalty and, from 2010 till 2019, a PGA Tour event.
Justice’s household additionally owns The Greenbrier Sporting Membership, a non-public luxurious neighborhood with a members-only “resort inside a resort.” That property was scheduled to be auctioned off this year in an try by Carter Financial institution & Belief of Martinsville, Virginia, to get better greater than $300 million in enterprise loans defaulted by the governor’s household, however a courtroom battle delayed that course of.
The public sale, set for a courthouse within the small metropolis of Lewisburg, includes 60.5 acres — together with the lodge and parking zone.
The lodge got here beneath risk of public sale after JPMorgan Chase offered a longstanding Justice mortgage to a credit score assortment firm, McCormick 101, which declared it to be in default.
In courtroom paperwork filed this week, Justice attorneys mentioned a 2014 deed of belief authorized by the governor is flawed as a result of JPMorgan didn’t receive consent from the Greenbrier Resort Company’s administrators or homeowners, and that auctioning the property violates the corporate’s obligation to behave in “good religion and deal pretty” with the company.
Neither attorneys for the Justice household nor Greenbrier CFO and Treasurer Adam Lengthy responded to requests for remark Tuesday.
Picture: The Greenbrier Resort, a five-star resort in White Sulphur Springs. (AP Picture/Jon C. Hancock, File)
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