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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">maga action jan 6 comm grift</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Committee Information</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Name:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>COLORADO CAMPAIGN FOR JOBS AND OPPORTUNITY<b><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Committee ID:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>20145028296</b></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Physical Address:<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>C/O BULLDOG COMPLIANCE<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Committee Type:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Independent Expenditure Committee</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">138 CONANT ST, 2ND FLOOR<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>BEVERLY MA 01915</span><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Status:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Active</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mailing Address:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>C/O BULLDOG COMPLIANCE<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Date Registered:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>06/17/2014</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">138 CONANT ST, 2ND FLOOR<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BEVERLY MA 01915<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Date Terminated:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Phone:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>617-231-4328 Fax: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jurisdiction:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>STATEWIDE</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Web:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Purpose:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>SUPPORT AND OPPOSE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Registered Agent:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">CHARLES GANTT<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Phone:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>617-231-4328<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Email:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>CLIENT@BULLDOGCOMPLIANCE.COM</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Designated Filing Agent:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>MI VO<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Phone:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>303-390-0358<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Email:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>MVO@J<b>ACKSONKELLY.COM</b></span></div></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>...</b></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/11/12/call-for-coal-companies-to-ditch-law-firm-jackson-kelly/">http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/11/12/call-for-coal-companies-to-ditch-law-firm-jackson-kelly/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>My jaw continues to drop when I think about the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/environment/breathless-and-burdened" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">scathing reports</a> this month from the Center for Public Integrity about the law firm Jackson Kelly and their scheming with clients to screw coal miners out of black lung benefits.</b> In <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/29/13585/coal-industrys-go-law-firm-withheld-evidence-black-lung-expense-sick-miners" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">“Coal industry’s go-to law firm withheld evidence of black lung, at expense of sick miners,”</a> Chris Hamby explains the deceitful and devious manner in which Jackson Kelly attorneys intentionally withheld medical reports that validate diagnoses of serious respiratory disease in coal miners.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The irony—the disgusting irony—is how coal operators insist that their employees are their most precious resource. Alpha Natural Resources, for example, <a href="http://www.alphanr.com/joinourteam/Pages/default.aspx" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">says</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Our people are our power…What’s the secret to our success? We put our people first.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arch Coal <a href="http://www.archcoal.com/careers/default.aspx" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">proclaims</a></font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“we recognize our employees as highly valued resources.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most coal operators also claim “i<b>ntegrity” as a key company value.</b></font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Let’s face it. Coal miners are only valued when they are running coal. They’re on their own—and Jackson Kelly sees to it—-when they develop black lung. It’s a disease that is 100 percent preventable but only if coal operators invest and maintain appropriate dust controls.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hamby’s investigative reporting reveals this about Jackson Kelly:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">“For almost two centuries, the firm has served the coal industry. It is the <strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">go-to place</strong> for many of the industry’s giants when they want to beat back a miner’s claim for benefits.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The law firm’s <a href="http://www.jacksonkelly.com/view.aspx?s=Overview" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">website notes</a> that it:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“enjoys a national reputation in safety and health, Federal Black Lung…and we try to practice law in ways that honor our founders. Clients should be served effectively [and] our profession honorably. The Firm takes even more pride in the trust of our clients across three centuries.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you can stomach any more, <a href="http://www.jacksonkelly.com/is_view.aspx?is=14&state=industry" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">they brag</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">“The Firm continues to provide the highest quality legal resources and representation to coal clients nationwide. The Firm’s unique history and ties to the coal industry enable its lawyers to appreciate the client perspective as the Firm becomes an integrated member of the client’s team. …Jackson Kelly attorneys understand the coal industry from the inside.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their website goes on to boast of their attorneys’ appointments to the Boards of the Kentucky Coal Association, West Virginia Coal Association, Colorado Mining Association, among others, as well as legal counsel to some of these groups.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Jackson Kelly’s attorneys and clients sit in well-furnished conference rooms with their spit-shined shoes, their “most precious resource” cuts the coal and breathes its deadly dust. The coal miners create the wealth for their employers and their lungs suffer the consequences. When they retire—sometimes during their prime—and make a claim for black lung benefits they are foiled at every turn.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hamby shares the story of West Virginia coal miner Gary Fox and his wife.</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fox was used to the dusty caverns of the mines in the southern part of the state, where he’d spent more than 25 years working underground in the heart of Appalachian coal country. They had never been in a courtroom before. …By 1999, his symptoms convinced him to apply for federal benefits. A doctor certified by the U.S. Department of Labor examined him and diagnosed the most severe form of the disease, known as complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. The government ordered his employer, a subsidiary of behemoth Massey Energy Co., to begin paying him monthly benefits, but, as is almost always the case, the company appealed.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to filing his claim for black lung benefits, Fox had undergone surgery to remove a mass from his lung. The pathologists ruled out cancer, and didn’t have any reason to look for the black lung disease. As Hamby explains:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Unknown to Fox, however, Jackson Kelly had obtained the slides of his lung tissue and sent them to two pathologists in its usual stable — doctors whose opinions typically supported the firm’s case. This time Jackson Kelly didn’t get the answer it wanted. Both pathologists wrote reports indicating the mass likely was complicated black lung.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson Kelly kept those results to themselves.</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fox, the judge and the firm’s own consulting doctors had no idea they [the original pathology reports] existed. In the months that followed, a team of Jackson Kelly lawyers built a case around the hospital pathologist’s report and its vague diagnosis of “inflammatory pseudotumor.” They encouraged the court and their own consulting doctors to view the report as the sole, definitive account of what Fox’s lung tissue revealed.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The judge ruled in favor of the coal company. Fox had few options, Hamby notes:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He had a family to support, and he needed health insurance because Mary had a chronic illness. He went back to the mine, his health deteriorating. For years, no one but the firm knew of the powerful evidence that he had the severe disease and should get out of the mine’s dusty atmosphere immediately.”</font></p><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What happened to Gary Fox was not the result of a rogue attorney or singular circumstances. It was part of a <strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">cutthroat approach</strong> to fighting miners’ claims that Jackson Kelly has employed to great effect for decades. Some of the firm’s tactics go beyond aggressive advocacy, crossing into unethical behavior, according to current and former judges, lawyers and state disciplinary officials. As a result, sick and dying miners have been denied the modest benefits and affordable medical care that would allow them to survive and support their families.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What I learned from Chris Hamby’s reporting about Jackson Kelly’s and the coal industry’s behavior disgusts me. It also disgust all of my family and colleagues who’ve read Hamby’s enlightening piece. Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers put it this way:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The lawyers at Jackson Kelly who hid clear evidence that miners had black lung, and the doctors at Johns Hopkins who denied the evidence of black lung on thousands of x-rays, deserve to have the harshest penalties that are possible in their professions levied against them. But whatever those penalties are, they cannot come close to making up for the terrible pain and suffering they have caused for thousands of victims of this insidious disease who met their end choking on their last breath.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My colleague, and miners’ advocate Tony Oppegard adds this:</font></p><blockquote style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 20px;"><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s long been true that coal companies use miners and then discard them when their bodies break down and they’re no longer useful in the money-making business. Coal company executives don’t see human beings with complex human emotions; they see people as machines with expiration dates. When they outlive their usefulness, they are discarded like garbage. And treated like garbage.”</font></p><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The actions of the lawyers at Jackson Kelly are shameful and dishonor all of us in the legal profession. I’ve long thought that most coal company lawyers are a dime a dozen, but the ethically-challenged attorneys profiled by the Center for Public Integrity don’t even deserve that small token of respect.”</font></p><p style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">“As for Dr. Wheeler and <b>Johns Hopkins University,</b> they literally make me sick. Any corrupt doctor who lives a lavish lifestyle at the expense of miners suffering from black lung isn’t worthy of compassion. The entire black lung compensation program is rife with deceit and fraud. It’s a national disgrace.”</font></p></blockquote><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> The coal companies in this country who currently retain Jackson Kelly for legal and lobbying services should ditch them. They should break all ties, acknowledge the scheming, and make amends to the nation’s coal miners. That’s the least they can do to demonstrate some truth to their assertions that miners are their greatest asset.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/29/13585/coal-industrys-go-law-firm-withheld-evidence-black-lung-expense-sick-miners"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/29/13585/coal-industrys-go-law-firm-withheld-evidence-black-lung-expense-sick-miners</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> ...at least 15 years since Fox first noticed signs of black lung disease. It started with shortness of breath. Then a cough that yielded black mucus. By 1999, his symptoms convinced him to apply for federal benefits. A doctor certified by the U.S. Department of Labor examined him and diagnosed the most severe form of the disease, known as complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. The government ordered his employer, a subsidiary of behemoth Massey Energy Co., to begin paying him monthly benefits, but, as is almost always the case, the company appealed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gary and Mary now found themselves visitors in a foreign world — one populated by administrative law judges who must make sense of reams of medical evidence, sophisticated legal arguments and arcane rules; coal-company lawyers who specialize in the vagaries of the system and know how to attack claims; and doctors who consistently find cause to diagnose almost anything but black lung.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the most prominent denizens of this world are the attorneys in the federal black lung unit of the law firm Jackson Kelly PLLC. For almost two centuries, the firm has served the coal industry. It is the go-to place for many of the industry’s giants when they want to beat back a miner’s claim for benefits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Jackson Kelly, with offices throughout Appalachia, as well as in Denver and Washington, D.C., defends companies accused of polluting the environment, marketing dangerous drugs or discriminating against workers</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> It helps corporations avoid regulations, drafts bills and lobbies legislators. Its bailiwick, though, is mining. U.S. News & World Report recently named it the nation’s top firm in mining law. Jackson Kelly’s name is on the lips of clinic workers, miners and lawyers throughout Appalachia and is emblazoned atop an office overlooking the Monongahela River in Morgantown, W.Va.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now, with government scientists documenting a resurgence of black lung disease, the firm’s legal strategy — including, the Center for Public Integrity found, a record of withholding evidence — could have significant consequences for sick miners and their families.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Robert C. Byrd Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Beckley, W.Va., where Gary and Mary Fox, unable to find a lawyer, faced a seasoned Jackson Kelly attorney during a 2000 hearing. GSA.gov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>More from 'Breathless and Burdened'</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part One: The Law Firm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Center for Public Integrity reports how a prominent law firm has withheld evidence of black lung in cases over the years, helping to defeat the benefits claims of sick miners.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part Two: The Doctors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Center, in partnership with ABC News, reports on the crucial role played by doctors — including a unit at the nation’s top-ranked hospital — in helping to beat back miners’ benefits claims. Reports will appear on publicintegrity.org and abcnews.go.com, and televised segments will air on World News and Nightline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part Three: The Next Battleground</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Center reports on the newest battle in the long-running war between coal companies and miners, revealing the latest industry effort to defuse emerging scientific evidence and contain its liabilities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson Kelly PLLC headquarters in Charleston, W.Va. Google Maps</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On this September morning in<b> 2000</b>, in the courthouse named for longtime Sen. Robert C. Byrd, an experienced Jackson Kelly attorney sat at one table. At the other, Gary and Mary sat alone, having tried unsuccessfully to find a lawyer.</span> This imbalance is not uncommon, as claimants’ attorneys have fled the federal black lung system in recent decades. Time and money are on the side of the coal company, which can hire scads of experts and drag cases out for years or decades. Miners’ lawyers are legally barred from charging claimants any fees, and the payoff, in the rare event of a win, is relatively meager.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tall, lean and stoic, Fox, then 50, answered the judge’s questions with quiet deference — “Yes, sir” and “No, sir.” His brief testimony, along with the report from the examination paid for by the Labor Department, constituted virtually his entire case. Then it was Jackson Kelly’s turn. Exhibit after exhibit became part of the record — medical reports, depositions, résumés of eminent doctors who’d reviewed the evidence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">More important, however, was what didn’t make it into the record. Two years earlier, doctors had removed a suspicious mass from Fox’s lung. The purpose had been to rule out cancer, which the hospital’s pathologist had done. There is no evidence he looked for signs of black lung, or even that he knew Fox was a miner. Unknown to Fox, however, Jackson Kelly had obtained the slides of his lung tissue and sent them to two pathologists in its usual stable — doctors whose opinions typically supported the firm’s case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This time Jackson Kelly didn’t get the answer it wanted. Both pathologists wrote reports indicating the mass likely was complicated black lung — a finding that, if credited by the judge, automatically would have won the case for Fox.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The firm’s lawyers could have accepted the opinions of the doctors they’d relied on so many times before. They could have conceded that Gary’s case had merit and agreed to pay him and Mary $704.30 a month, allowing him to escape the dust destroying his lungs. Even if they chose to fight the claim, they could have allowed their experts to see all of the pathology reports as they formed their opinions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">None of that is what the lawyers at Jackson Kelly did. Instead, the firm withheld the reports; Fox, the judge and the firm’s own consulting doctors had no idea they existed. In the months that followed, a team of Jackson Kelly lawyers built a case around the hospital pathologist’s report and its vague diagnosis of “inflammatory pseudotumor.” They encouraged the court and their own consulting doctors to view the report as the sole, definitive account of what Fox’s lung tissue revealed. Even one of the doctors retained by Jackson Kelly originally thought Fox had black lung. After being given the pathologist’s report, he changed his mind.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Relying heavily on the pathology report, a judge denied Fox’s claim for benefits in 2001, leaving him few options. He had a family to support, and he needed health insurance because Mary had a chronic illness.<b> He went back to the mine, his health deteriorating. </b>For years, no one but the firm knew of the powerful evidence that he had the severe disease and should get out of the mine’s dusty atmosphere immediately.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What happened to Gary Fox was not the result of a rogue attorney or singular circumstances. It was part of a cutthroat approach to fighting miners’ claims that Jackson Kelly has employed to great effect for decades, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity has found. Some of the firm’s tactics go beyond aggressive advocacy, crossing into unethical behavior, according to current and former judges, lawyers and state disciplinary officials. As a result, sick and dying miners have been denied the modest benefits and affordable medical care that would allow them to survive and support their families.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The role of lawyers in orchestrating sophisticated legal strategies to defeat claims for benefits is just the first chapter in the story of a system in which well-paid specialists thrive as miners struggle, the Center’s yearlong investigation, Breathless and Burdened, found. Coal companies rely on a cadre of doctors with prestigious affiliations, including a unit at the nation’s top-ranked hospital, to trump the opinions of miners’ physicians. Experts for hire continue a century-old tradition: denying scientific evidence that black lung can assume different appearances in different people, locking an entire class of sick miners out of the benefits system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson Kelly, documents show, over the years has withheld unfavorable evidence and shaped the opinions of its reviewing doctors by providing only what it wanted them to see. Miners, often lacking equally savvy lawyers or even any representation, had virtually no way of knowing this evidence existed, let alone the wherewithal to obtain it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m utterly dumbfounded. I just cannot conceive of attorneys doing that. … That’s really misleading the court. It’s misleading the witnesses.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">-Retired Administrative Law Judge Edward Terhune Miller, after learning evidence had been withheld from him more than a decade earlier.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the numbers: respiratory deaths, 2000-2010</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">55,421 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All work-related lung diseases</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">29,002 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mesothelioma, a form of cancer caused by breathing asbestos fibers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">26,632 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pneumoconioses, diseases in which dust, such as coal, causes scarring of the lungs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Source: NIOSH; Note: Some deaths may be from multiple causes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Key findings:</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson Kelly PLLC, long the go-to law firm for coal companies seeking to beat back miners’ claims for federal black lung benefits, has a decades-long record of:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Withholding key evidence. The firm has shielded reports generated by doctors of its choosing when even they found the miner had black lung. Of 15 cases reviewed in detail by the Center — dating from the 1980s to the present — the firm withheld reports in at least 11. Jackson Kelly has argued, sometimes successfully, that there is nothing improper about its approach, saying it submits evidence that support its case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Presenting incomplete or potentially misleading evidence. The firm has allowed judges and consulting doctors to form opinions based on only the reports it chose to provide, even as it withheld other documents that cast doubt on what was in the record.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conceding the case and avoiding disclosure. In the rare instances when a miner’s lawyer pushed for documents to be turned over and a judge commanded the firm to do so, Jackson Kelly, on behalf of its client, sometimes conceded the case, in theory rendering disclosure moot. This happened in six of the cases reviewed by the Center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the rare cases in which miners’ lawyers have pushed for access to these materials and a judge has ordered disclosure, Jackson Kelly has fought back aggressively, arguing that it has the right to withhold them. The firm has asked higher courts to intervene and accused judges of bias. It has defied court orders, knowing administrative law judges have no contempt powers to enforce their commands, or conceded the case rather than turn over evidence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In published decisions, judges have called the firm’s defenses of its actions “ludicrous” and “flimsy at best.” “This is pretty shocking,” a current judge wrote of Jackson Kelly’s behavior in a 2009 email obtained by the Center. “It appears to represent a long-standing pattern of misconduct.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, judges generally haven’t been receptive to arguments that Jackson Kelly’s handling of a particular case is symptomatic of anything broader or that disciplinary action is warranted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox’s case, still unresolved, could change that. A judge deemed Jackson Kelly’s actions in the case a fraudulent scheme that threatened the integrity of the judicial system. A split appeals court vacated that ruling, and the decision is now on appeal. After the Center contacted the West Virginia Office of Disciplinary Counsel and asked whether action would be taken, the office opened investigations into three Jackson Kelly lawyers who were involved in Fox’s case. To date, they have not been charged with any wrongdoing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The judge who denied Fox’s claim in 2001, Edward Terhune Miller, recently retired and, in an interview with the Center, learned what had been shielded from him more than a decade earlier. His eyes widened, and, for a moment, he was speechless.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m utterly dumbfounded,” he said. “I just cannot conceive of attorneys doing that. … That’s really misleading the court. It’s misleading the witnesses. It’s tainting the witness testimony.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jackson Kelly’s general counsel, on behalf of the firm and the individual attorneys contacted by the Center, declined repeated interview requests and would not discuss specific cases or general practices.<b> In court filings, the firm has argued that there is nothing wrong with its approach and that its proper role is to submit the evidence most favorable to its clients.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A spokesman for Alpha Natural Resources, which purchased Massey Energy and is now opposing Fox on appeal, declined to comment on the case while it is ongoing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until now, Jackson Kelly’s conduct in black lung cases has remained largely buried in voluminous files that are confidential because of the private medical and financial information they contain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the past year, however, the Center has identified key cases and obtained written permission from miners or their surviving family members to view their entire case files. These 15 files span 40 years and include hundreds of thousands of pages. The Center also reviewed the limited publicly available information on dozens more of the firm’s cases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Employer's ‘zealous’ representation strategy instills uncertainty and cynicism into a program intended to compensate miners disabled from black lung disease …” - ALJ Thomas Burke decision in the Gary Fox case, February 9, 2009</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In court decisions and emails obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, some judges have criticized Jackson Kelly’s approach in federal black lung benefits claims.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breathless and Burdened...</font></div></div>