Price of Justice (eBook)

A True Story of Greed and Corruption

Laurence Leamer (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
448 Seiten
Henry Holt and Co. (Verlag)
9781429953696 (ISBN)

Infos

A nonfiction legal thriller that traces the fourteen-year struggle of two lawyers to bring the most powerful coal baron in American history, Don Blankenship, to justice

Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy since the early 1990s, ran an industry that provides nearly half of America's electric power. But wealth and influence weren't enough for Blankenship and his company, as they set about destroying corporate and personal rivals, challenging the Constitution, purchasing the West Virginia judiciary, and willfully disregarding safety standards in the company's mines—in which scores died unnecessarily.

As Blankenship hobnobbed with a West Virginia Supreme Court justice in France, his company polluted the drinking water of hundreds of citizens while he himself fostered baroque vendettas against anyone who dared challenge his sovereignty over coal country. Just about the only thing that stood in the way of Blankenship's tyranny over a state and an industry was a pair of odd-couple attorneys, Dave Fawcett and Bruce Stanley, who undertook a legal quest to bring justice to this corner of America. From the backwoods courtrooms of West Virginia they pursued their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and to a dramatic decision declaring that the wealthy and powerful are not entitled to purchase their own brand of law.

The Price of Justice is a story of corporate corruption so far-reaching and devastating it could have been written a hundred years ago by Ida Tarbell or Lincoln Steffens. And as Laurence Leamer demonstrates in this captivating tale, because it's true, it's scarier than fiction.

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A nonfiction legal thriller that traces the fourteen-year struggle of two lawyers to bring the most powerful coal baron in American history, Don Blankenship, to justiceDon Blankenship, head of Massey Energy since the early 1990s, ran an industry that provides nearly half of America's electric power. But wealth and influence weren't enough for Blankenship and his company, as they set about destroying corporate and personal rivals, challenging the Constitution, purchasing the West Virginia judiciary, and willfully disregarding safety standards in the company's mines in which scores died unnecessarily. As Blankenship hobnobbed with a West Virginia Supreme Court justice in France, his company polluted the drinking water of hundreds of citizens while he himself fostered baroque vendettas against anyone who dared challenge his sovereignty over coal mining country. Just about the only thing that stood in the way of Blankenship's tyranny over a state and an industry was a pair of odd-couple attorneys, Dave Fawcett and Bruce Stanley, who undertook a legal quest to bring justice to this corner of America. From the backwoods courtrooms of West Virginia they pursued their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and to a dramatic decision declaring that the wealthy and powerful are not entitled to purchase their own brand of law. The Price of Justice is a story of corporate corruption so far-reaching and devastating it could have been written a hundred years ago by Ida Tarbell or Lincoln Steffens. And as Laurence Leamer demonstrates in this captivating tale, because it's true, it's scarier than fiction.

Textauszug

1

In the predawn hours of March 3, 2009, Tonya Hatfield huddled outside the darkened home of the United States Supreme Court. A late-winter storm had fallen on Washington, D.C., dropping eight inches of snow on a city expecting cherry blossoms. Crews had shoveled snow from around the court, and Hatfield climbed the forty-four steps to the main entrance, where three others were already in line, hoping to attend the court's morning session.

Forty-year-old Hatfield wore a heavy coat and leather gloves but nothing to protect her feet from the temperature, which hovered near zero. In her haste to drive north from her home in southern West Virginia before the snow made the roads impassable, she had forgotten her winter boots, and her toes went numb in her shoes.

Hatfield had traveled to Washington only once before, as an eleventh-grader with an exalted vision of American democracy. She was a coal miner's daughter who had been raised to believe that when everything else failed, a courtroom was the one place where the poorest could find justice against the richest and the most powerful. That belief had driven Hatfield from her home in Gilbert, West Virginia (population 417), to study at the University of Kentucky College of Law. Degree in hand, she'd returned home to set up her law practice in Gilbert. For the most part, she handled small personal injury cases, real estate closings, lots of wills, and other legal issues.

Hatfield wanted to use the law to help those who needed help most and to bring them true justice. But every time one of her cases brushed against the powerful and the well placed, she saw that in Mingo County the coal companies so effectively controlled the political system that overwhelming injustice and corruption were inevitable. For the young lawyer, it was one futile fight after another, and Hatfield had been thinking of giving up the law. That was when she'd met Pittsburgh attorney Bruce E. Stanley, who became her co-counsel in a case involving the death of two miners in a mine run by the Massey Energy Company, the largest and most powerful coal company in Appalachia.

The West Virginia–,born Stanley had so inspired Hatfield that she had not only kept her practice but, this morning, had driven 360 miles through a snowstorm to hear another of his cases involving Massey. It was Stanley's first visit to the court, too, but as a counsel of record, he would breeze through the building's mammoth doors. Hatfield, however, had not wanted to bother Stanley for a pass to the hearing, scheduled for 10:00 a.m. She would take her chances in line with the others.

As dawn arrived, Hatfield looked up at the Vermont-marble faade of the four-story court and saw the inscription 'equal justice under law.' She could hardly believe that, if she were lucky enough to get in, she would watch the justices apply those words to her friend's case. It could redefine judicial conduct not only in West Virginia's often coal-beholden legal system but in every court in the land.

Two miles from the shivering Hatfield, Theodore B. Olson drove through the city's empty streets. As his vehicle moved through the corridors of power, the sixty-eight-year-old lawyer sat in his thick wool coat reviewing yet again the case he would be arguing before the Supreme Court in a few hours.

Olson's mane of chestnut hair had a Reaganesque fullness, without a spot of gray. His face was that of the common man writ large. To a jury, it would have proved seductive. This morning, however, it wouldn't help him, the only jurors Olson would be facing were the court's nine justices. Olson was a man of great public modesty, but he had the fierce...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.3.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Strafrecht ► Kriminologie
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Wirtschaftsrecht ► Bank- und Kapitalmarktrecht
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-13: 9781429953696 / 9781429953696