Defendants include the political advocacy group West Virginia Consumers for Justice, and the Charleston Gazette, the main daily in West Virginia. Blankenship alone is suing the newspaper.

The suit alleges that the defendants “coordinated release of false and defamatory statements about Massey Energy” after a federal judge in Kentucky approved the bankruptcy filing of Horizon Natural Resources last year, which Massey bought.

Massey claims the defendants made public statements and aired television commercials that falsely said Blankenship fired Horizon workers and eliminated their benefits and that he had been convicted of contaminating West Virginia’s drinking water.

“We report Massey coal problems simply factually,” said Gazette editor James Haught in response to the charges.

Massey is the nation’s sixth-largest coal producer. Its operations are centered in the central Appalachian coalfields. It is the largest coal producer in West Virginia.

“The voice of working people is always being restricted,” Allen Hess, a retired coal miner in Virginia, told the Militant. “We don’t have the resources, the law is against us. You should be able to express your opinion and get it printed.”

“They aim to scare everybody into shutting up—no one should shut up,” said Judy Bonds, of Coal River Mountain Watch, a community organization in Coal River, West Virginia, where Massey has a number of operations.

The defamation suit has been filed in Virginia where Massey is based and the UMWA is headquartered.

The Consumers for Justice unsuccessfully sought to have the lawsuit thrown out because the group is not active in that state. Massey alleged that its ads were broadcast into Virginia and that the organization received substantial revenue from the UMWA.

The coal company originally filed the lawsuit in June. In late August, a circuit court judge dismissed the suit against the UMWA without prejudice, meaning the company could amend and refile its claims, which it did.

After the lawsuit was dismissed, the union announced a campaign against Massey, which began with full-page ads in West Virginia newspapers.

“Blankenship and Massey filed this case in a blatant effort to shut us all up and send a chill over the First Amendment rights of every West Virginian,” said UMWA president Cecil Roberts.
 
 
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