PUBLIC INFORMATION LAW APPLIES TO SUPREME COURT

(09/17/2008)

A Kanawha County judge has ruled the WV Supreme Court must turn over five e-mails between Chief Justice Spike Maynard and Massey Coal CEO Don Blankenship. Judge Duke Bloom gave the court 10 days to release the documents, after a Freedom of Information suit was filed by the Associated Press. The ruling allows the high court to withhold eight other e-mails sent by Chief Justice Maynard to Massey's Blankenship. Steven Canterbury, the Supreme Court's administrative director, who maintained the high court was excluded from the state's public information laws, says he's instructed his lawyer to turn over the e-mails within 24 hours. Canterbury says he can't say whether the court will appeal. The e-mails in question are related to communications between Maynard and Blankenship when they had a rendezvous in Monaco and southern France in 2006 while big dollar Massey cases stood before the high court. Bloom's ruling says officers of the courts are not exempt from state Freedom of Information provisions, but that eight of the e-mails can be withheld because they don't involve public business. Justice Maynard was defeated in the May primary, after state and national newspapers, TV programs, and magazines focused on political life in West Virginia.

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