Supreme Court: W.Va. justice should've quit case of coal firm whose CEO spent $3 million for him

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a justice of West Virginia's highest court should have recused himself from a case involving Massey Energy Co., the largest coal producer in Appalachia, because the company's top executive had financed a campaign to have the justice replace an incumbent after the initial lower-court verdict.

"By a 5-4 vote, the justices held that West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Justice Brent Benjamin should have removed himself from deciding the case because Massey Chief Executive Don Blankenship (left) had spent $3 million to help him get elected to the court," James Vicini reports for Reuters. The opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote in big cases; he was joined by the court's liberals, while the four conservatives dissented.

It marked the first time the high court had called for a judge's recusal in a case related to judicial elections; Kennedy wrote that there was no question about it because the facts of the case were “extreme by any measure.” He said there was “a serious, objective risk of actual bias” that threatened the plaintiff's rights to due process. “Just as no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, similar fears of bias can arise when — without the other parties’ consent — a man chooses the judge in his own cause.”

Chief Justice John Roberts said he "would give the voters of West Virginia more credit than that," and said Benjamin won the election comfortably (a margin of 6.6 percenatge points). He predicted that the decision “will inevitably lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased, however groundless those charges may be,” doing much more to “erode public confidence in judicial impartiality” than a ruling in Massey's favor would have. Roberts listed "dozens of questions that he said the majority had raised without really answering, and that the lower courts will have to wrestle with," David Stout reports for The New York Times. (Read more)

Kennedy said Massey and its allies who filed friend-of-the-court briefs (there were 16 total, on both sides) cited "no other instance involving judicial campaign contributions that presents a potential for bias comparable to the circumstances in this case." On the Law Blog of The Wall Street Journal, Nathan Koppel reports judicial reaction to the decision is favorable. (Read more)

The court ordered the West Virginia court to reconsider "its 2008 ruling that reversed a 2002 verdict by the Boone County circuit court to award $50 million to Harman Mining Corp. and its president, Hugh Caperton," Reuters reports. The court's vote on that ruling, and other in the case, were 3-2, but Massey said it was confident that a replacement justice, to be named by the other four, would rule likewise. (Read more) UPDATE, June 10: Blankenship issued a statement replying to the decision. For a nicely told story of what a long, strange trip led to it, read this story by Scott Finn of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

High court hearing coal case that could set rules for judicial recusal, argue against judicial elections

UPDATE, March 3: The Associated Press reports, "The court's four liberal justices and the conservative-leaning Anthony Kennedy all expressed support for a ruling that the Constitution's guarantee of a fair trial could require judges not to participate in a case in which there was a likelihood of bias." (Read more)

The Washington Post offers a good one-two punch on the question of electing judges, especially appellate judges in big-money races, as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case closely related to the issue: The appeal of a 3-2 ruling by the West Virginia Supreme Court in which one justice refused to disqualify himself though the winning party, Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship, was largely responsible for his election.

Backing the loser, Virginia coal operator Hugh Caperton, "are a number of unlikely compatriots -- Wal-Mart siding with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, for instance," reports the Post's Robert Barnes. The center's James Sample told him: "It's about the fundamental responsibility of the judiciary: a fair hearing before an impartial arbiter. ... This is a fact-bound, multi-factor, worst-of-the-worst scenario; if any sort of floor exists for due process, this is the best case to plumb those depths." A Post editorial put it another way: "If ever there was a case that illustrated why electing judges is a bad idea, it is the one out of West Virginia."

Blankenship argues that he "made lawful contributions to and on behalf of now-Justice Brent Benjamin," Barnes notes. "As in other political causes he has supported, he has a right to his political views about who is best to serve on the West Virginia Supreme Court. And there is no evidence that Benjamin had anything to gain financially from the dispute between Caperton and Blankenship, the only reason for recusal the Supreme Court until now has recognized."

Most of those on the other side "worry about the role money now plays in judicial elections," Barnes reports. "Wal-Mart joined with Lockheed Martin, Pepsi and other corporations on Caperton's side, telling the court in a brief that requiring Benjamin's recusal 'would signal to businesses and the general public that judicial decisions cannot be bought and sold.' Justice at Stake, a judicial reform group that has been sounding the alarm about the role of money in judges' races, notes that the amount of money raised by state supreme court candidates from 2000 to 2007 was almost $168 million, nearly double that raised during the 1990s. Former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor is among those sharply critical of those elections.
The Justice at Stake brief, joined by Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and a host of others, warns the court that it would 'weaken state reform efforts' to find no 'constitutionally significant threat to equal justice' in the case." However, "no one proposes a clear line for what level of support" should be found to require judges to withdraw from cases. For more of Barnes' story, click here.

The Post editorial concludes, "States should consider barring judges from considering cases involving litigants or lawyers who were directly or indirectly responsible for campaign contributions beyond a certain limit. More fundamental, states should consider abolishing judicial elections in favor of an appointment system that distances jurists from politics and fundraising." (Read more)

Coal controversy, costly campaign coincide to make court case that could alter judicial elections

Two intersecting brawls by Appalachia's largest coal operator, one in a business deal and the other in a judicial election, have created a U.S. Supreme Court case that "has the potential to change the way judicial elections are conducted and the way cases are heard in the 39 states that elect at least some of their judges," The New York Times reports.

The exploits of Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship, left, are also the subject of a report in the latest ABA Journal of the American Bar Association. The case involves a dispute with coal operator Hugh Caperton over a Southwest Virginia mine, a 3-2 ruling in Massey's favor by West Virginia's highest court, and the $3 million Blankenship spent to elect one of the judges who voted his way. When the Supreme Court said in November that it would hear an appeal, based on Justice Brent Benjamin's refusal to disqualify himself from the case, "much of the legal establishment cheered," the Times' Adam Liptak reports. "Here was an opportunity, bar associations and law professors said, to draw a line separating big money from judicial decision making." (NYT photo at Matewan, W.Va., train station by Don Petersen)

But Liptak notes that the facts of the case may not lend themselves to a Supreme Court decision about judicial elections and the increasing prevalence of big contributors who stand to gain or lose at the hands of judges. And in an interview in his unassuming office near Belfry, Ky., Blankenship told Liptak that he spent millions in 2004 to defeat Justice Warren McGraw, whom he did not like, rather than to ensure favorable rulings from Justice Brent Benjamin, who is in the fifth year of a 12-year term.

“I’ve been around West Virginia long enough to know that politicians don’t stay bought, particularly ones that are going to be in office for 12 years,” Blankenship said. “So I would never go out and spend money to try to gain favor with a politician. Eliminating a bad politician makes sense. Electing somebody hoping he’s going to be in your favor doesn’t make any sense at all. . . . Massey always has cases,” Liptak notes, "The company is a frequent plaintiff, and it has attracted lawsuits over environmental, workplace safety and labor issues." (Read more)

The Charleston Gazette has been on this story from the start, and the Sunday Gazette-Mail has a story by Paul Nyden debunking an assertion in a Massey brief that there was no indication that Blankenship and Benjamin had met. It also notes that oral arguments in the case are scheduled for March 3. To read it, click here.