By Mike Tony
For HDMedia
The company that has bought the nine-figure debt of Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., and his family plans to give them three days to hand over the keys to their Greenbrier business empire.
White Sulphur Springs Holdings LLC, an affiliate of Dallas-based Omni Hotels & Resorts, has proposed an order for federal court approval that would require the Justices, Greenbrier Hotel Corp., and other Greenbrier properties to turn over all property in the Greenbrier estate it wants to take over within three days.
The proposed order filed Tuesday for U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia Chief Judge Frank Volk to consider would give Justice, his wife Cathy and his son Jay — each defendants in the case — and their Greenbrier companies three days to deliver all property to a receiver sought by but not yet approved for White Sulphur Springs Holdings, including:
- All cash, revenues, rental and lease payments
- Keys to all post office boxes and to “every aspect” of the receivership estate, spanning all outbuildings and machinery on the estate or used to operate it
- Accounts receivable, security deposits, trust accounts, bank accounts, personnel files, operations manuals, financial and payroll records, payroll records, contracts and leases
- An employee roster and payroll information for all Greenbrier resort companies
- A list of any proceedings currently or in the past three years before any court or arbiter regarding
- leases or any agreements relating to the Greenbrier premises, and copies of the “entire litigation file” for the proceedings
- An equipment and inventory list for each of the Greenbrier Resort defendants
Revealed Friday, the receivership request from White Sulphur Springs Holdings follows it buying $289.48 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.
White Sulphur Springs Holdings, in the Friday filing, seeks “the immediate appointment of a receiver” over each of the Justice family’s companies with the authority to seize control of the firms, assets and operations, the right to start further legal proceedings regarding other non-debtors, and a permanent injunction to prevent the Justices and their current businesses from any actions that hinder the receiver’s authority to operate the companies.
In White Sulphur Springs Holdings’ new filing Tuesday, the firm asks for court approval for the receiver to appoint or employ any personnel, including accountants, auctioneers or legal counsel, needed to repair, operate or liquidate the estate.
The order would require the receiver to prepare a 60-day budget for the estate to be submitted to White Sulphur Springs Holdings for approval, with the initial budget to be submitted within 45 days of the order.
The receiver proposed by White Sulphur Springs Holdings is Michelle Russo of hotelAVE, a Providence, Rhode Island-headquartered company that provides court-appointed receivership services in addition to hotel real estate restructure strategies and real estate-owned asset management.
Russo, founder of hotelAVE, would assume full operation and control of all assets and operations of:
- The Greenbrier Hotel Corp.
- Greenbrier Medical Institute LLC
- Oakhurst Club LLC
- Greenbrier Golf and Tennis Club Corp.
- Greenbrier Legacy Cottage Development Company I, Inc.
- Greenbrier Legacy Cottage Development Company II, Inc.
Russo would oversee all rents, incomes, revenues and profits of those companies and submit a report making recommendations to White Sulphur Springs Holdings regarding the use or marketing of the estate. Russo would earn a fee of 0.1% of the total gross proceeds of any sale of the estate.
The receiver would review unsolicited proposals to buy the hotel, aid in choosing a broker, advisor or request-for-proposal process, develop a staff retention program as needed, review bid proposals and aid in any buyer franchise approval process.
The Justice family filed a lawsuit in Greenbrier County Circuit Court late Sunday night to defend their business portfolio from White Sulphur Springs Holdings’ takeover attempt. Jim Justice, Cathy Justice, their son Jay and daughter Jill, president of The Greenbrier, along with 14 companies under the family’s business umbrella, filed the lawsuit against the family’s past and present creditors, claiming they are conspiring to seize the historic Greenbrier resort from their ownership “by lawful and deceptive means.”
The Justices in their complaint seek cancellation of what they claim was an unlawful sale by Carter Bank of their loans to the defendants and the right to pay off the loans “at a fair price.”
‘Not the way to run America’s Resort’
But White Sulphur Springs Holdings said in a filing Tuesday to support its emergency motion for a receiver appointment that it has the “immediate right to collect the entire amount of indebtedness owed to it as described in” a Feb. 28, 2026, forbearance agreement.
A forbearance agreement between a lender and a delinquent borrower allows the latter to get current on their payments over a fixed time period while the lender agrees not to pursue its legal right to foreclose.
In the Tuesday filing, White Sulphur Springs Holdings reported the Justice defendants’ principal, interest and late fees due under Greenbrier Resort collateral documents exceed $370 million and that White Sulphur Springs Holdings has no confidence the Justices “can honor their indebtedness.”
The Omni affiliate said its “best chance of recovery is to ensure that its collateral, The Greenbrier Resort, is operated and maintained in a manner that maximizes its value.”
White Sulphur Springs Holdings reported in the filing it is prepared to present evidence that the Justice defendants failed to pay real estate taxes for 2025 and some in 2024 on The Greenbrier Resort in excess of $3.2 million and sales and use taxes totaling over $2 million. The company said it’s also prepared to subpoena witnesses who would testify that The Greenbrier Resort-related web of properties aren’t paying their creditors “within the ordinary course of business.”
“The [Justices’] diversion of funds has created a situation where The Greenbrier Resort is in significant need of extensive refurbishment to avoid even further devaluation and reputational harm,” White Sulphur Springs Holdings’ filing asserts. “This is not the way to run America’s Resort.”
White Sulphur Springs Holdings cited:
- 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 a federal class-action lawsuit filed last week
White Sulphur Springs cited the Kentucky firms’ contention in a filing last month that Justice companies have a pattern of hidden transactions used to avoid collection against the assets of what they asserted are half-billion-dollar companies.
That pattern, the Kentucky plaintiffs said in their case, includes Justice firms entering into sizeable transactions with one of their 100-plus affiliates or directly with their shareholders and hiding the evidence of the transfers by refusing to disclose the transactions unless the plaintiffs find them first and intentionally not retaining documents that explain transactions in their accounting records or disclosing documents or information regarding their transactions to their attorneys.
“And with every nonresponse, opposition, and excuse, the aim of the Defendants’ owners and officers is clear — to protect the Justice family of companies’ business model,” the Kentucky plaintiffs said, adding that their approach has allowed the defendants’ owners and officers to “fly by private jet, hire white-collar law firms for the appeal, etc., while pleading poverty in this case.”
White Sulphur Springs Holdings concluded that an immediate receiver appointment is needed to protect not only its collateral but other interested creditors “and the employees and vendors who rely on The Greenbrier Resort for their livelihood.”
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