Litigation

Massey?s Blankenship Draws More Attacks

By Peter Hardin

Near coal country, a newspaper’s editorial page editor joined the chorus of calls for the firing or resignation of Massey Energy Co. chairman and CEO Don Blankenship.

Dan Radmacher of the Roanoke Times urged the firing of Blankenship on the heels of the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 workers. “To Blankenship, safety and environmental regulations are clearly nothing more than annoyances and distractions from Massey’s mission: moving coal,” Radmacher wrote.

An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on “a drumbeat of calls for a shake-up” and predicted a scheduled annual Massey shareholder meeting May 18 may be rowdy.

The company’s stock nosedived Friday after it was reported that Massey Energy is under criminal investigation by the FBI, a Reuters article said.

Blankenship is best known to Gavel Grab readers for spending  $3 million in 2004 to help elect a state Supreme Court justice. That led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling, in Caperton v. Massey, that large campaign expenditures could create an unacceptable potential for bias.

A column in the Charleston Gazette by Howard Swint said West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin, who Blankenship helped elect, should step down. The column discussed Caperton and called Justice Benjamin “an apparent  lapdog for the coal industry.”

You can learn more about Caperton from Gavel Grab, and from Justice at Stake’s resource page about the case.

Full post as published by The Gavel on May 03, 2010 (boomark / email).