Litigation

W.Va. Case Echoes Grisham Novel?Again

By Lissette Villarruel

In an endless, eerie echo of John Grisham?s novel “The Appeal,” West Virginia residents have filed a lawsuit claiming that coal mining activities have intoxicated the local water.

A recent article from The Washington Post reports that citizens of several towns are suing eight coal companies for contaminating their water by dispensing coal mine wastes into former underground mines. Among the alleged culprits is Massey Energy, the coal company currently involved in a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court on March 3.

Caperton v. Massey is a case in which Massey CEO Don Blankenship spent $3 million on a state Supreme Court justice who later cast the deciding vote in favor of his company. The question before the Court is whether now-Chief Justice Brent D. Benjamin had a constitutional obligation to step aside in an appeal involving someone who spent so heavily to elect him.

The case helped inspire author John Grisham to write a best-selling novel in which residents of a small town sue a big company for contaminating their local water and, thus, causing countless illnesses and deaths. The company?s executive then spends millions of dollars to elect a pro-business justice to the state Supreme Court and overturn the decision.

Now, as evidence that life can, indeed, be stranger than fiction, West Virginia citizens are claiming that the toxic well water, which has been found to contain traces of arsenic, lead, iron, manganese, and sulfides, has caused a number of illnesses and even deaths.

The state Department of Environmental Protection declared that there is no connection between the coal mining activities and the toxicity of the drinking water.

To find out more about Caperton v. Massey, you can visit the Justice at Stake Caperton resource page.

To watch an interview with John Grisham concerning his inspiration for The Appeal, you can visit this site.

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 20, 2009 (boomark / email).