By Mike Tony
For HDMedia
Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., and his family are doubling down in their fight to preserve their control of the historic Greenbrier Resort and web of related properties.
Representing the Justice family, Charleston-based attorney Steven Ruby on Wednesday filed an amended complaint claiming new allegations against a company that has bought the family’s nine-figure debt and that company’s affiliates looking to take over the family’s Greenbrier business empire.
The senator’s adult children who have shared leadership of his family business empire — the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. and 13 other Justice-controlled firms — doubled down in their amended complaint on their initial April 12 lawsuit in Greenbrier County Circuit Court they lodged against the family’s past and present creditors, claiming they are conspiring to seize the historic Greenbrier Resort from their ownership by “deceptive means.”
The Justices on Wednesday newly estimated their compensatory damages to be at least $500 million, not including punitive or other damages.
They cite what they claim has been loss of business value, loss of revenue, reputational damage, damage to relationships with business partners and loss of business opportunities stemming from the defendants going after the Greenbrier properties in what they argue has been their conspiracy to commit fraud, breach of a confidentiality agreement and state law protecting trade secrets.
The Justices are pressing their Greenbrier County Circuit Court lawsuit as White Sulphur Springs Holdings LLC, an affiliate of Dallas-based international hotel chain Omni Hotels & Resorts, seeks U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia appointment of a receiver to take over the Justices’ Greenbrier properties — including the historic Greenbrier Hotel.
White Sulphur Springs Holdings has proposed an order for the court’s approval that would give the family and their Greenbrier firms three days to deliver all property to a receiver, including all keys to the estate, financial records, bank accounts, Greenbrier Resort employee roster and payroll information, and an equipment and inventory list.
Revealed on April 10, the receivership request from White Sulphur Springs Holdings follows its buying $289 million in loans, subsequently reduced to judgments, related to entities in which Justice had an interest, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing last month from the seller of the loans, Carter Bankshares, Inc., parent company of Martinsville, Virginia-based Carter Bank.
The Justices have claimed that TRT Holdings, Inc., parent company of Omni, violated a nondisclosure agreement that barred it from acquiring or proposing to acquire their loans. That alleged violation, they claim, invalidates White Sulphur Springs Holdings’ purchase of the loans and wipes out its right to seek a receiver.
In addition to TRT Holdings itself, the Justices on April 12 sued Robert and Blake Rowling, father and son billionaire owners of the Omni properties, TRT Holdings executive vice president Michael Smith, and Carter Bank, the bank that sold the Justices’ loans to White Sulphur Springs Holdings.
In their new Greenbrier County Circuit Court filing Wednesday, the Justices claim that “secret efforts” included a meeting in January 2026 among TRT Holdings, Blake Rowling, a representative of Carter Bank and others at which TRT and Rowling revealed they planned to take over The Greenbrier and use employees from the Omni Homestead Resort and Spa in Hot Springs, Virginia — fewer than 40 miles away — to immediately begin operating both resorts, thus eliminating the jobs of “a substantial number of current employees at The Greenbrier.” Elsewhere in the lawsuit, that number is estimated to be “hundreds.”
TRT Holdings did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
TRT Holdings’ affiliate White Sulphur Springs Holdings said in a previous filing it seeks a receiver “due to the waste, fraud and abuse of” the defendants, which it says threaten the value of its collateral — The Greenbrier Resort.
White Sulphur Springs Holdings contends the defendants have been “diverting substantial amounts of revenue generated from The Greenbrier Resort to their other, unrelated businesses,” resulting in “significant unpaid taxes” for the resort, not making all required payments to resort employees — including employees’ health insurance premiums and 401(k) employer matching contributions — and the resort itself “not being properly operated and maintained.”
The complaint cites “considerable mounting legal and financial issues” facing the defendants and their affiliates, including:
- A November agreement Justice and his wife struck to pay $5.1 million in unpaid federal income tax assessments after the IRS sued the couple over what it said was an outstanding balance of $5,164,739 in unpaid federal income tax assessments for the 2009 tax year
- A December federal court filing from Louisiana-based First Guaranty Bank indicating the Justices’ Greenbrier Hotel Corp. owed a debt that had ballooned to more than $47 million and was growing by more than $20,000 a day, accruing from a loan the bank made to the company under a lending program established through the CARES Act
- Two Kentucky companies, New London Tobacco Market Inc. and Fivemile Energy LLC, presenting evidence to contend last month that Justice’s business empire has been hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in assets in a federal court case in which they have been trying for years to collect on an eight-figure judgment against Justice-controlled firms
- The Greenbrier Clinic failing to meet federal clinical image quality standards for mammograms, resulting in the suspension of all mammography operations at the facility and federal class-action litigation filed against the Clinic in April
In a news teleconference with reporters Wednesday, Ruby downplayed the importance of those legal and financial liabilities, observing Omni has been involved in separate litigation of its own, although its business empire — unlike the Justices’ — is not in grave financial peril.
“Any business of any size,” Ruby said, “is going to have a significant amount of litigation that it winds up involved in.”
Justices claim Greenbrier debt acquired in secret
The Justices accuse TRT of buying the Justices’ loans via White Sulphur Springs Holdings at least in part because of confidential information it received under false pretenses.
They say that accusation stems from Blake Rowling and Smith visiting The Greenbrier in September 2024 under the pretense of serving as advisers to an unnamed private equity firm that funded another payoff proposal presented on March 18, 2026, by the Justices to Carter Bank.
TRT obtained access to confidential information belonging to The Greenbrier under a confidentiality agreement between Greenbrier Hotel Corp. and the private equity firm, with the accord providing that no one subject to its provisions could use any information obtained through it for any purpose other than the financing transaction being considered by the private equity firm, the Justices assert.
The Justices claim TRT’s true motive in obtaining their properties’ confidential information was to boost its effort to acquire The Greenbrier, including proprietary pricing, marketing and reservation information, confidential financial records and access to areas of The Greenbrier resort complex off limits to the public.
The Justices further claim that Carter Bank knew TRT was violating the confidentiality agreement by using confidential information in an attempt to acquire the loans.
Wednesday’s amended complaint cites an April 23 Dallas Morning News report that the Rowlings have owned second-lien debt against The Greenbrier since September 2024, attributing to Blake Rowling an estimate that their share is worth between $12 million and $15 million.
Second-lien debt is a loan repaid after any first-lien loans if a borrower enters bankruptcy, representing a higher-risk investment.
The Justices claimed in their Wednesday filing that TRT’s second-lien Greenbrier debt was acquired secretly and that they didn’t become aware of the acquisition until Blake Rowling was quoted as acknowledging it in the Dallas Morning News report.
The Justice family contends that by secretly acquiring second-lien Greenbrier debt, the TRT defendants became subject to the terms of a second-lien note barring them from contacting any of the Justices’ credit providers or lenders regarding their indebtedness as well as buying or negotiating to buy any of the Justices’ loans or debt.
Justice family attorney says case resolution ‘on the table’
An evidentiary hearing in White Sulphur Springs Holdings’ District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia lawsuit is slated for 9:30 a.m. June 8 in Charleston, having been rescheduled from May 11 following a joint motion from the parties to facilitate what Chief District Judge Frank Volk called “orderly disposition of the issues” in an order.
Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Ruby didn’t dismiss the possibility of a resolution, appearing to have lost significant leverage over the future of The Greenbrier in recent weeks.
“On the one hand, it’s really important to The Greenbrier and to the Justice family to stand up for their legal rights and to make sure that they’re not taken advantage of,” Ruby said. “On the other hand, certainly, they did not come into this situation last month looking for a court fight. And I think any reasonable option for resolving this would certainly be on the table.”
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