Blankenship loves him some frivolous lawsuits

by: heath_harrison

Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 04:33:31 AM EDT

You may remember how, when Don Blankenship tried to buy the West Virginia Legislature for the GOP in 2006, one of the issues he used his phony children's advocacy group, "For the Sake of the Kids" to advance was a concern over so-called "frivolous lawsuits"

(Translation: Your right to seek protection from companies like Massey through the courts needs to go.)

The cause has long been a favorite of Blankenship's. I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that a speaker or two at Don-a-Pollute-za brought it up among the hodge-podge of conservative issues raised at that gathering.

It also should be of no surprise that Blankenship and Massey have decided to file a civil suit against Climate Ground Zero activists Laura Steepleton and Nick Stocks (and two others) for the Edwight tree-sit a few weeks ago.

An excerpt of my interview with Steepleton (the rest of which is coming soon)

<

L.S. - Massey has slapped a civil suit on the four of us - the basis of that being that we stopped business and endangered security, and also for the expense of hiring additional security.  
Q- And Massey has also filed a similar suit for those who took part in the dragline protest earlier this year?
L.S. - Yes, and those people - I haven't received a letter yet, but I'm sure there will probably be a follow up - have been put on an injunction to not be allowed on their property.

It's interesting that Blankenship told Hoppy Kercheval of Metro News that the tree-sits weren't interfering with his operations (at about 1:12 in this clip).

Climate Ground Zero co-founder Mike Roselle discussed the suit involving the dragline activists with me.

M.R. - Massey has filed a civil action against us in Boone County. We have another against us here in Raleigh County.  [...] They're asking for damages for the 4 hours that the dragline was out of commission.
They filed it shortly after [June] 19th, when the action happened. So I think, within a week, we got a temporary restraining order and that was replaced by a permanent injunction. And here in Raleigh County we have another injunction.
Q -  Is this a new legal tactic for a company in response to direct action? Or has this occurred before with tree-sits and direct action in the Pacific Northwest?
M.R. -  No. We haven't had too many injunctions in logging protests. Generally, we're dealing with different timber companies in the same region, so we're not always hitting the same logging company every time.

We have been sued for damages before. In terms of being enjoined for trespassing, there have been a couple cases of that, but it's not something we normally have to deal with.