By Mike Tony
For HDMedia
The IRS has filed federal tax lien notices against two businesses belonging to Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., reporting more than $3.6 million in unpaid assessments and extending the Justice family business empire’s long record of unmet tax obligations.
The lien notices filed Thursday with the Greenbrier County clerk come as the two businesses, the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. and Greenbrier Clinic, face federal lawsuits alleging systemic failures in financial management and patient health assessments, respectively, with the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. operating under threat of takeover via court-appointed receivership.
Tax liens secure government interest in property when a taxpayer doesn’t pay their tax debt, depriving federal, state or local governments of revenue for public safety, education, sanitation and other essential services.
In a statement provided via Arlington, Virginia-based public relations firm PLUS Communications, longtime Justice family business attorney Steve Ruby said Friday that “[t]he recent IRS action is a purely precautionary measure taken after extensive discussions between The Greenbrier and the IRS[.]”
Ruby claimed the IRS notices were “entirely consistent with” a payment plan that The Greenbrier communicated to the IRS.
A spokesperson with PLUS Communications did not respond to a request for the terms or conditions of the reported payment plan.
Federal tax law prohibits IRS employees from discussing the tax information of specific taxpayers, and the IRS has declined to comment on Justice-related tax liens.
In November, the federal government sued Justice and his wife, Cathy Justice, over what it said was over $5.1 million in unpaid federal income tax assessments. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia approved a binding settlement agreement between the federal government and the Justices that month for the Justices to pay the $5,164,739 in unpaid federal income tax liabilities.
The federal government lawsuit against the Justices and settlement, whose terms haven’t been disclosed, came after the IRS filed two tax lien notices with the Greenbrier County clerk in October issued to the Justices indicating they owed just over $8 million in unpaid taxes for assessments that span more than a decade.
The IRS listed unpaid assessment balances for tax periods ending in 2009, 2017 and 2022.
New IRS Greenbrier Hotel liens follow rash of W.Va. liens
The newly filed lien notice against Greenbrier Hotel Corp. reports $3,334,736 in unpaid assessments for four tax periods ending June 2024 through September 2025, with assessment dates ranging from September 2024 through February 2026.
That notice indicates three of the four unpaid assessments are for federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from employee paychecks, while the other is for provision of funds for paying unemployment compensation to workers who have lost their jobs.
The Greenbrier Hotel Corp. federal tax lien notice follows the West Virginia Tax Division issuing 10 tax lien notices to the company from December 2025 to April 2026 indicating the firm owed the state more than $4.4 million. That sum consisted of just over $3.98 million in sales and use tax and related interest and penalties, plus another roughly $455,000 in personal income tax and related interest and penalties.
The West Virginia Tax Division in May asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia for approval to intervene in a case filed by White Sulphur Springs Holdings LLC, an affiliate of Dallas-based hotel chain Omni Hotels and Resorts, that seeks court approval to immediately appoint a receiver over Justice family companies tied to The Greenbrier.
The West Virginia Tax Division said that it wants to intervene in the case to protect its liens and “preserve their statutory priority.” The court has not yet ruled on the tax unit’s request.
White Sulphur Springs Holdings wants the court to immediately appoint a receiver over Justice family companies tied to The Greenbrier 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.
The request from the newly formed White Sulphur Springs Holdings follows it buying $289 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 in March from the seller of the loans, Carter Bankshares Inc., parent company of Martinsville, Virginia-based Carter Bank.
The court in May issued an order tossing previously set deadlines in the case to allow the Justice family more than a month to close a deal for financing that they say will allow them to repay the debt claimed by White Sulphur Springs Holdings.
The Justice family and six of their Greenbrier-tied firms submitted a proposed financial term sheet, revealing it to be a nonbinding pact for a $500 million loan from Kennedy Lewis Investment Management LLC, a New York City-based private credit lender and asset manager founded in 2017.
In a filing late Friday, the Justice families and their Greenbrier-tied companies reported their financing transaction was “proceeding as expected” and believed the transaction could be completed per a May 30 order that set an expectation the transaction would close by July 16.
The Justices reported work on the main transaction documents was ongoing and expected to be done by the middle of the following week, with payoff amounts from lenders expected to be received the same week.
They also reported that work left before closing consists mainly of finishing supporting transaction documents, completing and validating schedules to be included with the transaction documents, the completion of an internal reorganization, “and similar tasks to finalize the closing deliverables[.]”
Greenbrier Hotel lien follows casino licensing struggle
The IRS filing of the federal tax lien notices to the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. Thursday came two days after the West Virginia Lottery Commission put the company on “financial watch.”
The Lottery Commission required quarterly audited income statements for the casino to be reviewed by an outside firm after Ruby reported operational difficulties caused a monthslong delay for the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. in submitting required audit information.
The casino’s state license was set to expire at the end of June due to the Justice family-controlled Greenbrier’s failure to submit required audit information that Lottery Commission officials said was due around March 20 to allow ample time before the June 30 license expiration.
But the Lottery Commission on June 30 renewed the company’s casino license at an emergency meeting with hours before the license was to expire after the commission said it received the audit information.
Ruby told the Lottery Commission at a meeting Friday that “a significant amount of staff turnover” this year “created difficulties for the accounting and finance departments,” resulting in The Greenbrier’s delay in submitting the required information.
At the emergency meeting, Chris Lambert, outside financial consultant with Charleston-based accounting firm Suttle & Stalnaker, reported the Justice Family Group LLC, which holds the casino, hotel and other Greenbrier properties, was profitable on a lesser level than the previous year and recommended the company “go on a watch” until it has its debt refinanced, reporting that its liabilities nearly tripled from $90 million in 2024 to $260 million in 2025.
Greenbrier Clinic federal lien comes amid class-action suits
The federal lien notice for the Greenbrier Clinic filed with the Greenbrier County clerk Thursday lists $289,893 in unpaid assessments, $285,698 of which are indicated to be for federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from employee paychecks, while the remainder is indicated to be for provision of funds for paying unemployment compensation to workers who have lost their jobs.
The unpaid assessments span tax periods ending June 30 to Dec. 31 last year, with assessment dates ranging from October 2025 to March 2026.
The Greenbrier Clinic a self-billed, all-inclusive medical services unit at the Justice family’s Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, was hit with two federal class-action lawsuits in April and May in response to letters to patients saying the establishment failed to meet federal mammography standards over a two-plus-year period, calling into question the validity of testing results delivered in that span.
May’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Greenbrier County residents, April Wilson of White Sulphur Springs and Erin Dotson of Ronceverte, who respectively had mammograms performed at the clinic in October 2024 and March 2025, according to their complaint.
That complaint followed another filed in April against the clinic on behalf of plaintiff Tabitha Martin of Monroe County, who alleges she “did not get what she paid for” when getting a mammogram at the clinic on Feb. 13, 2026. That complaint cites the same March correspondence from the clinic reporting concern about the quality of its mammography.
The clinic sent the letter correspondence to more than 1,000 patients living across the country and internationally, according to Martin’s complaint.
The Greenbrier Clinic’s website has claimed to have a roughly 80-member staff that, in part, “delivers the highest quality diagnostic health care,” with “state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment” that “assures maximum comfort and safety for our patients, as well as accurate, early detection of medical problems.”
But the website at greenbrierclinic.com was nonfunctioning as of Saturday morning.
Martin, Wilson and Dotson have asked the court to consolidate their cases and set deadlines for the filing of a consolidated complaint, asserting it would be an efficient move and avoid inconsistent rulings.
A Wednesday filing on Martin’s behalf reported her counsel conferred with counsel for Wilson and Dotson and asked the court to appoint Anthony Majestro and Graham Platz of Charleston law firm Powell & Majestro PLLC, Stephen Skinner and Shawn Hogbin of the Charles Town-based Skinner Law Firm, and D. Adrian Hoosier II of the Charleston-based Hoosier Law Firm lead class counsel.
History of tax liens dogging Justice family’s Greenbrier firms
The West Virginia Tax Division issued three tax lien notices to the Justice family-controlled Greenbrier Hotel Corp. and Greenbrier Sporting Club Inc. that were filed with the Greenbrier County clerk in September 2025 indicating roughly $1.36 million in unremitted taxes.
The notices indicated the companies’ indebtedness to the state for that amount in unremitted sales and use tax in addition to interest and penalties, all of which became final in May and June this year. The notices show Greenbrier Hotel Corp. owed roughly $1.3 million and Greenbrier Sporting Club owed $55,415, with liens that expire in June 2035, per state code.
Seven tax liens issued by tax officials in February 2024 for the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. totaled over $3.5 million.
In July 2024, state tax officials withdrew two February 2024 tax liens totaling $897,615 against the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. A third lien was withdrawn in April 2024 that totaled $388,540.
Justice has claimed in the past without evidence that legal proceedings looking to collect reported debts from his business interests have been part of a political conspiracy to sabotage his Senate candidacy.
Justice made a similar claim during a rare virtual news conference in October, suggesting his Senate candidacy played a role in his businesses not getting what he asserted were owed tax refunds in a dispute dating back to 2009, the year Justice sold Bluestone Coal Corp. to Russian coal producer Mechel for more than $400 million plus millions of shares of Mechel stock. Justice bought back Bluestone in 2015 for $5 million.
“[T]he Biden administration’s in, Jim’s running for the Senate. If you don’t think these are political moves, you’re crazy,” Justice said a month before he and his wife agreed to pay the federal government $5.1 million in unpaid tax assessments.
But the IRS’ tax lien notices indicating $8 million-plus in unpaid assessments were prepared eight months into the Trump administration, on Sept. 30, according to the documents.
Key date set in Justice appeal of $29M ruling against him
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit last month scheduled an oral argument to be held July 30 before a three-judge panel in Cincinnati in a case in which Justice is appealing a Tennessee federal court’s ruling that he owes a surety bond provider based in that state over $29 million.
The Tennessee court ruled Justice owes Lexon Insurance Company, a surety bond provider based in that state, over $29 million comprised of unpaid debt and collateral obligations plus prejudgment interest dating back to July 2023 after Justice in 2018 and 2019, when he was governor, guaranteed to the bond provider in agreements that his coal companies would timely pay sums of $5 million and $20 million, respectively.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. ruled in the District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee that Justice owed the $29 million-plus in an Oct. 30 filing that followed an August trial on damages the court awarded to Lexon in December 2024. Lexon sued Justice alone in July 2023, making a breach of contract claim it said resulted from Justice’s obligations being triggered by his coal companies defaulting on payment obligations they incurred after Lexon issued surety bonds.
State regulators typically require coal mining companies to get a bond to secure their obligations under a permit, while the surety receives compensation through premiums in exchange for undertaking the obligations. The bond provider often requires, as Lexon did, collateral as security should the company default on its obligations and indemnification against losses and expenses incurred stemming from the bond.
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