Several hundred lots owned by Justice Holdings are up for foreclosure sale, according to a legal notice in this morning’s Beckley Register-Herald.
Justice Holdings is a company owned by the family of Senator Jim Justice, R-W.Va.
The sale is of almost 400 lots at Glade Springs Resort in Raleigh County where the Justice company has been at odds for several years with the community association over homeowners fees.
The special commissioner sale is listed for 9 a.m. Oct. 29.
Justice’s family business has sometimes had properties up for forced auctions in the past, including portions of The Greenbrier Resort, and has wound up averting those through legal action or payment arrangements.
The Justice family businesses have a long track record of financial conflicts. In recent weeks, The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported on more than $850,000 in delinquent property taxes owed by Justice family businesses in Greenbrier County.
A financial dispute between the Justice family business and Glade Springs Village Property Owners Association goes back years.
Glade Springs is a resort where the Justice’s family has had majority ownership, but it is also a planned community. Common properties including roads, the lake and the golf courses, are the property of the homeowners association.
The homeowners board has taken issue with whether Justice Holdings owed assessments to maintain common properties just like everybody else.
Jim Justice became the lead investor at the Glade Springs resort near Beckley years before his 2016 election as West Virginia’s governor and now senator. Now Justice corporate executives James Miller and Stephen Ball are listed as the top representatives for Justice Holdings, along with the senator’s son and daughter, Jay and Jill Justice.
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 homeowners association has gone to court over a range of issues, but a big one was whether Justice’s company owed assessments on lots under the family’s control.
Lawyers for Justice Holdings have disputed in court whether the lots can legally be sold at a foreclosure sale.
Generally, Justice Holdings disputes the fee assessments and the resulting liens by arguing that the real estate was never properly incorporated into the Glade Springs Village common interest community.
Justice Holdings filed a petition for writ of prohibition intended to prevent Raleigh Circuit Judge Todd Kirby, a former Republican state delegate, from allowing the sale to satisfy the assessment liens.
Justice holdings also moved for a stay of the underlying proceedings, saying that moving forward would result in the unlawful sale and transfer of hundreds of real estate parcels.
Lawyers for the homeowners association disputed those moves.
As of now, a special commissioner has been directed to conduct a judicial foreclosure and sale of the Justice Holdings lots, including in Queensglade, Chapelwoods and Greenbrier Villas, to satisfy liens.