Back in Court
Last week, we took the next step in our effort to squeeze out more information about who knew what before the Crandall Canyon mine collapse.
Attorneys for mine co-owner Bob Murray and his subsidiaries filed a lawsuit in Utah's 3rd District Court challenging the release of meeting minutes and other documents about the mine that were held by the Intermountain Power Agency.
Intermountain Power is a public entity that runs coal plants that provide electricity to a handful of Western states and owns stakes in several Utah mines that provide their coal, including Crandall. As a result, they are covered by GRAMA.
We filed our request for documents last September and Murray's lawyers immediately objected, asking IPA -- which is Murray's business partner and customer -- to reconsider releasing the records. IPA ruled the records should be made public. Murray appealed to the Utah Records Committee, which ruled unanimously that they should be made public. Now Murray is suing IPA to keep the records private. The Tribune will, in all likelihood, be asking to intervene and argue its case.
An interesting sidenote, Murray lawyer Kevin Anderson told the State Records Committee that the records dispute has soured the relationship between Murray's companies and IPA to the point that the coal operator won't give any records about the ongoing mining operations to IPA. Instead, officials that want documents have to go somewhere and review them.
Another interesting sidenote, Anderson is the son of Jack Anderson, who is one of the Heroes of Journalism, and the younger Anderson beat the FBI when it came after his dad's papers after his death. In fact, I interviewed Anderson a while back and he told me about how he and his brothers and sisters would toy with the federal agents who were assigned to tail his dad and who were staking out the family's home.
You can read Murray Energy's arguments here: MurraysRecordsAppeal.pdf
They are, essentially, the same arguments that they raised before the records committee -- that the information in the records is proprietary and private. You can read The Tribune and IPA's response to those arguments here RecordsCommitteeTribStatement.pdf
and here
IPAResponsetoRecordsCommittee.pdf
The company raised the same objections when we filed an identical request with the Los Angeles Division of Water and Power. LADWP is the biggest consumer of IPA's electricity and had a designee on the board of Genwal Resources, which was set up to oversee operations at the mines. Murray went all the way to the California Supreme Court fighting the release of those documents. You can read the lower court ruling here:
LADWPRuling.pdf
And here
LADWPCrandallDox.pdf
are the redacted documents that they were trying to keep out of our hands.
I'm confident that we'll end up getting these records, but I'm also fairly certain that we're looking at months and months of legal sparring before we get any resolution here.
--RG
Attorneys for mine co-owner Bob Murray and his subsidiaries filed a lawsuit in Utah's 3rd District Court challenging the release of meeting minutes and other documents about the mine that were held by the Intermountain Power Agency.
Intermountain Power is a public entity that runs coal plants that provide electricity to a handful of Western states and owns stakes in several Utah mines that provide their coal, including Crandall. As a result, they are covered by GRAMA.
We filed our request for documents last September and Murray's lawyers immediately objected, asking IPA -- which is Murray's business partner and customer -- to reconsider releasing the records. IPA ruled the records should be made public. Murray appealed to the Utah Records Committee, which ruled unanimously that they should be made public. Now Murray is suing IPA to keep the records private. The Tribune will, in all likelihood, be asking to intervene and argue its case.
An interesting sidenote, Murray lawyer Kevin Anderson told the State Records Committee that the records dispute has soured the relationship between Murray's companies and IPA to the point that the coal operator won't give any records about the ongoing mining operations to IPA. Instead, officials that want documents have to go somewhere and review them.
Another interesting sidenote, Anderson is the son of Jack Anderson, who is one of the Heroes of Journalism, and the younger Anderson beat the FBI when it came after his dad's papers after his death. In fact, I interviewed Anderson a while back and he told me about how he and his brothers and sisters would toy with the federal agents who were assigned to tail his dad and who were staking out the family's home.
You can read Murray Energy's arguments here: MurraysRecordsAppeal.pdf
They are, essentially, the same arguments that they raised before the records committee -- that the information in the records is proprietary and private. You can read The Tribune and IPA's response to those arguments here RecordsCommitteeTribStatement.pdf
and here
IPAResponsetoRecordsCommittee.pdf
The company raised the same objections when we filed an identical request with the Los Angeles Division of Water and Power. LADWP is the biggest consumer of IPA's electricity and had a designee on the board of Genwal Resources, which was set up to oversee operations at the mines. Murray went all the way to the California Supreme Court fighting the release of those documents. You can read the lower court ruling here:
LADWPRuling.pdf
And here
LADWPCrandallDox.pdf
are the redacted documents that they were trying to keep out of our hands.
I'm confident that we'll end up getting these records, but I'm also fairly certain that we're looking at months and months of legal sparring before we get any resolution here.
--RG
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