Litigation

Massey Calls New Caperton Suit ?Meritless?

By Peter Hardin

Hugh Caperton’s latest round of litigation against old nemesis Don Blankenship and Massey Energy Co., the topic of a Gavel Grab post a day ago, gets full-length feature treatment in The New York Times today.

Massey Energy’s response to the new lawsuit, filed in Virginia by Caperton (in photo): It had not seen the lawsuit, the company said in a statement, but ?Mr. Caperton?s claims have been rejected by the West Virginia court system multiple times, and we hope that his attorneys have not decided to waste more resources by seeking to bring a meritless case back to the Virginia court system.?

The Times on Caperton’s personal status: “Twelve years after the first lawsuit was filed, he remains unemployed, in debt and barred by the federal government from owning a coal company.”

Caperton’s remarks on allegations in his lawsuit that an appeal of a $50 million jury award in his company’s favor was not heard impartially by the West Virginia Supreme Court, when it included a justice who had vacationed with Blankenship, the Massey CEO: ?I think that anyone can connect the dots and see what happened.” The high court overturned the jury award three times.

Full post as published by The Gavel on November 10, 2010 (boomark / email).