WV governor fights to stop foreclosure on his Greenbrier hotel

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, in the midst of a run for the U.S. Senate, is also in a frenzied legal battle to keep a historic West Virginia hotel at his luxury resort before to be auctioned. next week due to unpaid debts.

About 400 employees at The Greenbrier Hotel received a letter Monday from a lawyer representing health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund saying they will lose coverage on Aug. 27 if the governor’s family doesn’t pay $2.4 million dollars in missing contributions, Peter Bostic of the Workers United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board said Tuesday.

The coverage will end the day the hotel is put up for auction, which the Justice family’s lawyers asked the judge to stop. They argue that, in part, the auction would hurt the economy and threaten hundreds of jobs.

The Justice family has not made contributions to the employee health fund for four months, and an additional $1.2 million in contributions will soon be due, according to the letter from Ronald Richman, an attorney at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, the firm representing the Fund. Amalgamated National Health.

The letter also said that some contributions were taken out of employees’ paychecks but never transferred to the health fund, which covered union officials.

“We are heartbroken and disappointed to learn that the Greenbrier Hotel, despite its contractual and legal obligation to do so, has become seriously delinquent with our health insurance carrier,” Bostic said in a statement. “Greenbrier’s delinquency seriously jeopardized our members’ health care benefits and is morally and legally wrong.”

The letter was first reported by RealWV, a news site run by former Democratic state Sen. Stephen Baldwin. Democrat Glenn Elliott, Justice’s opponent in the U.S. Senate race and former mayor of Wheeling, wrote on social media platform X that “Justice’s sense of entitlement to things that are not his is boundless and indefensible.”

Justice, who owns dozens of companies and had a net worth estimated at $513 million by Forbes magazine in 2021, has been accused in numerous lawsuits of failing to pay millions in family business debts and fines for unsafe working conditions in its coal mines.

He began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 2017 after purchasing The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009. The hotel has hosted US presidents, royalty and, from 2010 to 2019, a PGA Tour.

The Justice family also owns The Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “resort within a resort.” The property was scheduled to be auctioned this year in an attempt by Martinsville, Va.-based Carter Bank & Trust to recover more than $300 million in defaulted business loans from the governor’s family, but a court battle delayed this process.

The auction, set for a courthouse in the small town of Lewisburg, involves 60.5 acres — including the hotel and parking lot.

The hotel was threatened with an auction after JPMorgan Chase sold a long-standing debt to a debt collection company, McCormick 101, which said it was in default.

In court documents filed this week, Justice’s attorneys said a 2014 deed of trust approved by the governor was flawed because JPMorgan did not obtain the consent of Greenbrier Hotel Corporation executives or owners and that auctioning the property violates the company’s duty to act in “good faith.” and deal fairly” with the corporation.

Attorneys for the Justice family and Greenbrier CFO and Treasurer Adam Long did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Photo: The Greenbrier Hotel, a five-star resort in White Sulfur Springs. (AP Photo/Jon C. Hancock, File)

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