Gov. Jim Justice tries to halt foreclosure of his West Virginia hotel as he runs for US Senate

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Gov. Jim Justice is in a mad-dash legal fight as he runs for U.S. Senate to keep a historic West Virginia hotel at his luxury resort before it’s auctioned off next week due to unpaid debts.

Around 400 employees at The Greenbrier hotel received a letter Monday from an attorney representing health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund saying they will lose coverage Aug. 27 unless the Republican’s family pays $2.4 million in missing contributions, Peter Bostic of the Workers United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board said Tuesday.

The coverage would end the day the hotel is set to go to auction, which Justice family attorneys have asked a judge to stop. They argue in part the auction would harm the economy and threaten hundreds of jobs.

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

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

“We are heartbroken and disappointed to learn that The Greenbrier Hotel, despite its contractual and legal obligation to do so, has become severely delinquent to our Health Insurance carrier,” Bostic said in a statement. “The Greenbrier’s delinquency has put our member’s Health Care benefits in severe jeopardy and is morally and legally wrong.”

The letter was first reported on 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 the former mayor of Wheeling, wrote on the social media platform X that Justice’s “sense of entitlement to things that aren’t his is limitless 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 court cases of being late in paying millions for family business debts and fines for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.

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

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

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

The hotel came under threat of auction after JPMorgan Chase sold a longstanding Justice loan to a credit collection company, McCormick 101, which declared it to be in default.

In court documents filed this week, Justice attorneys said a 2014 deed of trust approved by the governor is defective because JPMorgan didn’t obtain consent from the Greenbrier Hotel Corporation’s directors or owners, and that auctioning the property violates the company’s obligation to act in “good faith and deal fairly” with the corporation.

Neither attorneys for the Justice family nor Greenbrier CFO and Treasurer Adam Long responded to requests for comment Tuesday.

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This story has been corrected to show that about 400 employees received the insurance letter, not 400 exactly.