Whatever Became of Don Blankenship's Defamation Lawsuit? A Tiny History of Coal Baron Hubris

**For this update on some recent political history that got personal for me, I tried out a new A.I. platform named Perplexity, which aggregates sources from the entire Web. Much of the language under "Key Legal Points" belongs to Perplexity. But I added detail, because I was personally involved.

After West Virginia coal baron Don Blankenship's failed 2018 Senate race in West Virginia (which I followed here and here), he sued some 150 writers/broadcasters/media outlets/random political enemies for a grand total of $8 billion for defamation, claiming that all those media influencers (including, incidentally WataugaWatch and yours truly) had maliciously labeled Mr. Blankenship a felon, or had mistakenly said he was convicted of a felony (when in fact it turned out to be a misdemeanor, though he still spent a year in Federal prison). His lawsuit alleged we had individually and collectively damaged his reputation and hurt his chances of beating Senator Joe Manchin for the West Virginia Senate seat.

Oh, the company WataugaWatch was keeping! Some of the others named as defendants: the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Esquire magazine, Wonkette, the Huffington Post, Breitbart News -- the list of defendants ran on for pages. I feel pretty sure that somebody working for Blankenship must have done universal Web searches for every incidence of the words Blankenship and felon (or felony) appearing together in print. If there was a Google search behind this lawsuit, it certainly ensnared me, an otherwise obscure blogger in the backwoods of North Carolina. (My two uses of Blankenship and felon are archived at the links above. My written correction to those posts is here.)

It took months -- years, actually --for the Federal judge in Charleston to dismiss Blankenship's suit for failing to reach the high bar of proving actual malice. 

Key Legal Points Assembled by Perpexity:

Blankenship, former CEO of Massey Energy, served a year in prison for misdemeanor conspiracy related to mine safety violations leading up to the deadly 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 miners.

The courts found that defendants' errors were not made with the requisite "actual malice" standard necessary for public figures to prove in defamation cases, particularly given Blankenship's high-profile 2018 Senate campaign.

West Virginia District Court Judge John Thomas Copenhaver Jr. granted summary judgment to all defendants in 2022. That summary judgment was affirmed by the appellate court in 2023. The U.S. Supremes declined to consider Blankenship's final appeal -- allowing the district court ruling to stand.