Jim Justice, the businessman-turned-politician governor of West Virginia, has been pursued in court for years by banks, governments, business partners and former employees for millions of dollars in unmet obligations.
And for a long time, Mr. Justice and his family’s companies have managed to stave off one threat after another with wily legal tactics notably at odds with the aw-shucks persona that has endeared him to so many West Virginians. On Tuesday, he is heavily favored to win the Republican Senate primary and cruise to victory in the general election, especially after the departure of the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin III.
But now, as he wraps up his second term as governor and campaigns for a seat in the U.S. Senate, things are looking dicier. Much like Donald J. Trump, with whom he is often compared — with whom he often compares himself — Mr. Justice has faced a barrage of costly judgments and legal setbacks.
And this time, there may be too many, some suspect, for Mr. Justice 73, and his family to fend them all off.
“It’s a simple matter of math,” said Steven New, a lawyer in Mr. Justice’s childhood hometown, Beckley, W.Va., who, like many lawyers in coal country, has tangled with Justice companies.
Mr. Justice and his scores of businesses would be able to handle some of these potential multimillion-dollar judgments in isolation, Mr. New said. But “when you add it all up, and put the judgments together close in time, it would appear he doesn’t have enough,” he said.
The son of a coal magnate, Mr. Justice took over the family business in 1993 and expanded its interests beyond coal, with acquisitions in agriculture and high-end hospitality. Like many sprawling enterprises, the Justice companies have taken on prodigious debts. But they have also taken on a reputation for not paying them— and that may be catching up to them.
A bank in neighboring Virginia that has served the Justice family for decades has begun the process of collecting on more than $300 million in defaulted loans. Some of the family business’s prized assets, chief among them the 246-year-old Greenbrier resort, are in the bank’s sights, and collections on the governor’s personal bank accounts and even his house are now a possibility. Efforts have already been underway in Virginia to seize properties belonging to Mr. Justice’s son, James C. Justice III, the president of the family companies.
In West Virginia, the tax authorities have placed liens on Greenbrier properties for millions in unpaid taxes, only months after auctioning off tax-delinquent properties owned by the governor elsewhere in the state.
Collecting on such substantial debt has pitted creditors against one another, at times to the Justices’ benefit. One bank sued Mr. Justice along with a number of banks last month after discovering that the collateral for one of its loans, some land near the Greenbrier, had also been pledged to a host of other lenders.
In a separate case, a federal judge forced the Justice-owned coal business to hand over a company helicopter to one creditor owed millions of dollars, which in turn agreed to share the proceeds of the helicopter’s sale with another creditor, also owed millions. And still, the suits, judgments and collection efforts keep piling up.
Neither the governor’s office nor lawyers for the Justice companies responded to questions. When asked about the growing mound of business troubles, Mr. Justice has repeatedly said that the daily operations of his companies are overseen by his children, and that he is focused on his duties as governor.
“There’s no way on earth that I’m going to take one second of focus off of what my job has been since day one,” he told reporters in February. “I’ve put up with this nonsense the whole time I’ve been here and everything. But absolutely, there’s no way I’ve taken my eye off the ball.”
The most serious of Mr. Justice’s troubles concerns Carter Bank and Trust, a regional bank based in southern Virginia. Carter Bank had been lending to the Justice family for decades, at one point extending roughly $775 million in loans to the Justice businesses, more than a quarter of the bank’s total net loans at the time.
Justice companies had been steadily paying that down, but in April, they defaulted on the remainder of that debt — $302 million in loans that had been personally guaranteed by the governor and members of his family. The bank demanded immediate repayment.
For the Justices, this was — as described in a deposition last summer by Mr. Justice’s son — a “mega crisis.” In November, the governor, his family and more than a dozen of their businesses sued the bank in federal court for a billion dollars, claiming that Carter Bank had engaged in…
Read More: Gov. Jim Justice Faces Heavy Business Debts as He Seeks Senate Seat