FAIRMONT, W.Va. — U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin and businessman Rock Manchin say that a $1.7 million civil suit filed against them by their brother is hanging on to one document for proof.
And that document isn’t even legal and binding, nor can it be tied to any past oral or written agreement over money they owe to their brother, Dr. John Manchin II, the plaintiff in the case.
In the latest filing in the civil case that has pitted one Manchin brother against the other two, attorneys for Sen. Manchin and Rock Manchin say that a July 2012 funds sharing agreement is no proof that Dr. Manchin is owed $1.7 million from bailing his brothers out of bankruptcy in the late 1980s, and they ask the court again to dismiss the suit. The brief was filed Monday in Marion County Circuit Court.
Dr. Manchin claims he gave $1.7 million to his brothers’ creditors in the late 1980s so that their carpet business could avoid bankruptcy. Dr. Manchin, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and the owner of two medical clinics in Marion County, claims that not only have his brothers refused to pay him the $1.7 million they owe him, but that the two dissolved their partnership without his knowledge and that Dr. Manchin was misled to believe he would receive payments from a coal gob disposal project in which the Manchins didn’t even have a legal interest…