One of the best books written on former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and the politics of coal in West Virginia is Laurence Leamer’s The Price of Justice.
Now, Leamer has optioned The Price of Justice to Waterfall Films in Los Angeles.
Things started breaking Leamer’s way after he signed the deal with Waterfall Films earlier this year.
Last month, Blankenship was indicted for crimes in connection with the April 2010 Upper Big Branch explosion that killed 29 coal miners.
And last week, ABC News reported that as a $90 million jury verdict was wending its way to the West Virginia Supreme Court, the lawyer handling the nursing home abuse case lined up thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for the court’s chief justice — Robin Jean Davis — and negotiated a private deal to buy a $1.3 million Lear Jet from her husband — trial lawyer Scott Segal.
When the nursing home case finally reached the state’s high court earlier this year, Chief Justice Davis wrote the majority opinion upholding the jury verdict for the client of lawyer Michael Fuller, though lowering the final payout to just over $40 million. The cut for Fuller’s firm — more than $17 million — one of the largest payouts he’s ever secured, ABC News reported.
Segal and Davis play a central role in Leamer’s book.
Even though the focus of the book is on civil litigation between two coal executives — Hugh Caperton and Blankenship — Segal and Davis are more than just supporting characters.
People thought that because Segal made his millions suing on behalf of union workers, Davis would side with the liberal majority on the West Virginia Supreme Court.
But Leamer implies that Davis flipped to Blankenship’s side and an allied herself with the conservatives on the court for less than righteous reasons.
Leamer is hoping to hear about a landing spot for The Price of Justice mini-series sometime early next year.
In the meantime, he’s finishing off his next book, titled The Darkest Valley. It’s about the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama by the Ku Klux Klan — starring former Alabama Governor George Wallace, Klan Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton and civil rights attorney Morris Dees.
Stay tuned.