2/8/2003

Jury Finds W.Va. Coal Company Liable

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:56 p.m. ET

MADISON, W.Va. (AP) -- A jury on Friday ordered a coal company to pay residents of a coalfield town $473,000 in damages caused by coal dust falling on their property.

The decision against Elk Run Coal Co., a Massey Energy subsidiary, also gave the court the authority to implement a dust control plan.

The verdict came in a lawsuit filed by more than 150 residents of Sylvester who claimed Elk Run's operation, located no more than 750 feet from some of their homes, has destroyed property values.

Residents of the southern West Virginia town, population 200, had sought damages of at least $3 million.

One plaintiff, Mary Miller, said Sylvester residents have been ``prisoners in our homes'' because of coal dust falling from Elk Run's operations.

``I don't want money. My goal is to stop the coal dust so we can live our lives again,'' Miller said.

In its verdict, jurors found that Elk Run failed to control air pollution and protect neighboring areas from its operations as required by federal and state law.

The jury declined to award punitive damages, saying Elk Run did not act with intentional or reckless disregard.

Massey Energy spokesman Jeff Gillenwater said he had not seen the verdict and could not comment. The lawyer representing the company said he was pleased the jury did not order punitive damages.

2/8/2003

Coal Company Ordered to Pay Dust Damages

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:40 p.m. ET

MADISON, W.Va. (AP) -- A jury Friday ordered a Massey Energy subsidiary to pay residents of a coalfield town about $1 million in economic damages caused by coal dust falling on nearby houses, vehicles and other property.

The verdict against Elk Run Coal Co. came in a lawsuit filed by more than 150 residents of Sylvester who claimed the company has destroyed property values, making it impossible for them to sell their homes and move.

Residents had submitted 110 individual damage claims seeking total economic damages of at least $3 million. Jurors awarded a total of about $1 million, said plaintiffs' attorney Brian Glasser.

Jurors found that Elk Run had created a nuisance and had negligently harmed the plaintiffs. The jury also determined that Elk Run had failed to comply with federal and state surface mining laws by failing to control air pollution or failing to protect offsite areas from damage from its operations.

However, jurors declined to award punitive damages, saying Elk Run did not act with intentional or reckless disregard.

Jurors also answered an advisory question that gives Boone County Circuit Judge Lee Schlaegel the authority to place Elk Run's operation under the court's supervision. Jurors said ``yes'' when asked if Elk Run is creating a nuisance that is causing damage to any of the plaintiffs.

It will be up to Schlaegel to decide whether to order court supervision of Elk Run's operation.

The trial started in October and jury deliberations began Wednesday.

Because the jury found that Elk Run had violated the federal Surface Mining Act, plaintiffs' lawyers will ask the court to order the company to pay an estimated $2 million in legal fees and costs associated with bringing the case to trial, Glasser said.

Glasser's firm has been working on the case for five years.

``This will provide some insurance that you won't have to put up with this in the future,'' Glasser told about 50 plaintiffs after the verdict.

One plaintiff, Mary Miller, said Sylvester residents have been ``prisoners in our homes'' because of coal dust falling from Elk Run's operations.

``I don't want money. My goal is to stop the coal dust so we can live our lives again,'' Miller said.

Another plaintiff, Pauline Canterberry, said she was happy with the verdict but feared residents would have to continue to police Elk Run.

``I wish I can say no to that question, but they are people you just can't talk to, and they have been from day one,'' Canterberry said.

Massey Energy spokesman Jeff Gillenwater said he had not seen the verdict and could not comment.

Sylvester residents in the audience applauded the verdict as the jurors were excused.

This editorial originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

James Haught
Bush’s headlong dash toward war smacks of Goliath stomping David

I was delighted when the cruel, oppressive, fanatical, stupid, Taliban regime was driven out of Afghanistan. Zealots who force women to wear shrouds and stone some to death — while destroying priceless Buddhist sculptures as “infidel” works — shouldn’t rule any society.

Similarly, I’ll be delighted if cruel, oppressive, tyrannical dictator Saddam Hussein is removed in Iraq. Like all despots, he retains power by murdering possible rivals. The world would be better without him (and without sundry other vicious autocrats).

But I wish his removal could be done in civilized fashion by the world community — perhaps like Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in Holland. Maybe that isn’t feasible with Saddam just now, while he’s surrounded by his ragtag military remnants, but patience could attain it.

Ideally, I wish the U.N. inspectors in Iraq could be multiplied greatly, and perhaps escorted by blue-helmeted U.N. troops. Years of thorough searching would prove whether Saddam is hiding horror weapons, as the White House contends. If they’re finally found, the United Nations could decide how to accomplish his arrest and trial. But if the weapons don’t exist, it would show that President Bush’s clamor for war is based on other motives (to gain access to Iraq’s giant oil reserves, maybe).

Unfortunately, instead of waiting for systematic inspections, Bush is dragging America headlong toward hasty war, surrounding Iraq with a mammoth strike force that only the world’s sole superpower can deploy.

Bush’s strategy wouldn’t just remove the lone leader — it could kill enormous numbers of helpless Iraqi families. Last week on CBS Evening News, Pentagon correspondent David Martin gave this report:

“If the Pentagon sticks to its current war plan, one day in March, the Air Force and Navy will launch between 300 and 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq — more than were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War.

“On the second day, the plan calls for launching another 300 to 400 cruise missiles. There will not be a safe place in Baghdad, said one Pentagon official.... The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before.”

The Bush administration attack plan is called “Shock and Awe,” because it’s designed to leave Iraq stupefied. But maybe it would leave Iraq a slaughterhouse.

The president said he intends to “liberate” Iraq’s people. Perhaps we should ask them if they want to be liberated by 800 cruise missiles.

Disturbingly, it smacks of Goliath smashing David. I don’t want America to be a military monster that crushes weak little countries, just because it has the power — and because the president proclaims their rulers to be “evil.”

The Bush team clearly is exaggerating evidence of the alleged evil, to muster international backing for war.

Last week on PBS television, Harper’s Publisher John MacArthur said Bush claimed last fall that “a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency says Saddam Hussein is six months away from building a nuclear weapon’’ — but the IAEA later disavowed any such report. And a claim that Iraq tried to import aluminum tubes for atomic devices has been deflated by U.N. inspectors.

Repeatedly, Bush has declared that Saddam “gassed his own people” — but this claim was disputed by the CIA’s former Iraq chief. Stephen Pelletiere wrote in The New York Times that both Iran and Iraq used poison gas in their 1980s war (when the White House was backing Iraq). Pelletiere said a CIA study concluded that the Kurdish villagers cited by Bush were killed by Iranian gas during a battle.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations this week, he praised a new British intelligence report on Iraq’s “concealment, deception and intimidation.” But a London TV station revealed that the British report was mostly a word-for-word copy of a paper by a California graduate student — even including his typographical errors.

And so it goes. The evidence of “evil” is being inflated to rouse war fever.

As I said, I hope Saddam winds up in the prisoner dock of a U.N. court — but I don’t want my country to massacre vast numbers of Iraqi families, just to make one arrest.

Haught, the Gazette’s editor, can be reached by phone at 348-5199 or by e-mail at haught@wvgazette.com.