West Virginia’s Supreme Court sided with Glade Springs homeowners on most issues in a complicated financial dispute with a development company owned by Gov. Jim Justice and his family.
The Supreme Court’s 57-page order written by Justice Haley Bunn sided with the homeowners association on most matters, went against them on a few and sent some details about assessments back to be resolved at the circuit court level.
The Glade Springs Village Property Owners Association took the ruling, overall, as a win.
“While this conflict is not entirely over since the Supreme Court has remanded the issue of developer assessments back to circuit court, we are pleased that several major issues have been finally resolved,” the homeowners association board of directors wrote in a memo to other property owners at the resort community.
The dispute is over whether Justice Holdings, one of dozens of companies owned by the governor and his family, should have been paying the same property assessments as other homeowners.
Raleigh Circuit Judge Robert Burnside filed an order in 2021 in favor of the homeowners association, awarding $6.6 million in assessments.
Justice Holdings appealed that, and Supreme Court Justices heard oral arguments in late April. Justices John Hutchison and Bill Wooton, who each have Raleigh County roots, were recused In their place, circuit judges Bridget Cohee and Gregory Howard sat in on the court.
In the ruling that came out late last week, Armstead and Howard issued a separate, shorter opinion to concur in part and dissent in part with the majority.
Jim Justice became the lead investor at the Glade Springs resort near Beckley years before his 2016 election as West Virginia’s governor. Now Justice corporate executives James Miller and Stephen Ball are listed as the top representatives for Justice Holdings, along with the governor’s grown children, Jay and Jill Justice.
Glade Springs is a resort but also a planned community. Common properties including roads, the lake and the golf courses, are the property of the homeowners association.
Justice and his family acquired the lead development role in the golf resort community and its thousands of acres in 2010. Glade Springs has 750 private residences.
The conflict evolved as Glade Springs homeowners ousted a Justice-backed governing board and put in their own. The new homeowners board continued to take issue with whether Justice Holdings owed assessments to maintain those common properties just like everybody else.
In the ruling, Supreme Court justices addressed a central question of whether Glade Springs Village is subject to the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, West Virginia’s consumer protection law for owners in planned communities.
“Accordingly, we find no error in the circuit court’s determination that the Uniform Act fully applies to GSV, as it is a common interest community,” Bunn wrote in the majority opinion.
The majority agreed with the circuit court’s ruling that Justice Holdings is required to pay annual assessments to the association on that the lots that the developer maintains in its inventory.
Right now, the Glade Springs Village Property Owners Association has liens on Justice Holdings lots.
“Relatedly, GSVPOA has already begun the process of judicial foreclosure on the Justice Holdings lots,” board members wrote in the memo to homeowners association members.