Family of the Governor of West Virginia. Jim Justice has reached an agreement with a debt collection company to avoid closing their historic hotel while he runs for the U.S. Senate, the resort announced Thursday.
The Republican governor’s family was scheduled to appear in court Friday to ask a judge to halt the auction of The Greenbrier, which was scheduled for Tuesday.
That session has been cancelled.
“It’s taken care of and we move forward, and The Greenbrier is as complete as it can be,” Justice said at a news conference. “The Greenbrier will forever be in our family.”
The hotel was threatened with auction after JPMorgan Chase sold a long-standing loan taken out by the governor to a debt collection company, McCormick 101 — an affiliate of Beltway Capital — which declared it in default.
In a statement, the Justice family said it had reached an agreement with Beltway Capital to “receive a specific amount to be paid in full by October 24, 2024.”
The family said they had already secured the money, although the judges did not specify the amount.
“Under the agreement, Beltway Capital will reserve its rights if the Justice family fails to act,” the statement said.
A message left with Beltway Capital was not immediately returned Thursday.
Justice defended his family’s business practices at Thursday’s briefing and reiterated past claims that JPMorgan Chase’s sale of The Greenbrier loan was a politically motivated effort to damage his U.S. Senate campaign.
“We had a 14-year working relationship with JPMorgan, and then right after the primary where I was the winner — hands down, you’re going to the U.S. Senate no matter what anybody says under the sun — it does, it did , it had no meaning other than political, it had no meaning at all,” he said.
Justice said his family had been making payments to JPMorgan until June and were told the loan had been sold in July without warning. JPMorgan Chase did not respond to an email seeking comment.
If the hotel had been sold, Justice said, “there would have been carnage and destruction like you can’t imagine for the great people of The Greenbrier,” referring to the jobs that could have been lost.
The auction, which was set to take place at a courthouse Tuesday in the small town of Lewisburg, included 60.5 acres, including the hotel and parking lot.
Attorneys for the Justice family filed a motion this week for a preliminary injunction to try to stop the auction of The Greenbrier.
They alleged that a 2014 deed of trust approved by the governor was flawed because JPMorgan did not obtain consent from directors or owners of Greenbrier Hotel Corp. and that the auctioning of the property violates the company’s obligation to act “in good faith and to deal fairly” with the corporation.
They also argued, in part, that the auction would hurt the economy and threaten hundreds of jobs.
About 400 employees at The Greenbrier hotel received notice this week from a lawyer for health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund saying they would lose coverage on Tuesday, the scheduled auction date, if the Justice family did not pay $2.4 million in contributions that are missing.
Peter Bostic, a union official with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board of United Workers, said the Justice family has not contributed to the employee health fund in four months and that an additional $1.2 million contribution will soon be due. dollars, according to the letter the board received from Ronald Richman, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, the firm representing the fund.
The letter also said some contributions were deducted from employee paychecks but never transferred to the fund, according to union officials.
Justice dismissed concerns about the claims on Thursday, telling reporters that “insurance payments had been made and were being made regularly.”
“There is no way the great union employees at The Greenbrier are going without insurance,” he said. “There is no possible way.”
Justice is running for Senate against Democrat Glenn Elliott, a former Wheeling mayor. Justice, who owns dozens of companies and had a net worth estimated at $513 million by Forbes Magazine in 2021, has been accused in lawsuits of delaying payment of millions in family business debts and fines over unsafe working conditions in the mines. his coal.
He began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 2017 after buying The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009.
The hotel has hosted US presidents, members of the royal family and, from 2010 to 2019, a PGA Tour.
Justice’s family also owns The Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “vacation within a resort.”
That property was scheduled to be auctioned this year in an effort by Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, to recover more than $300 million in defaulted business loans from the governor’s family, but a court battle delayed that process .
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