October 14, 2026 - West Virginia Senator Jim Justice must pay more than $25 million to a unit of Sompo International over unpaid premiums and collateral on surety bonds for his family’s coal companies, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The decision, in Lexon Insurance Company v. James C. Justice II, was issued Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Ohio. Lexon, based in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, is a subsidiary of Bermuda-based Sompo International.

Surety bonds let coal companies obtain mining permits by guaranteeing they will restore mined land. Unlike a typical insurer, a surety can’t cancel a bond when premiums go unpaid, so Lexon relied on annual premiums and collateral to limit exposure that has exceeded $100 million. The Justice family’s coal companies began buying Lexon bonds in 2010 and fell behind on premiums around 2016 as the coal market weakened, according to the ruling.

In February 2019, the companies signed an amended agreement promising to post $20 million in collateral and to pay overdue premiums at $200,000 a month until a defined “Total Indebtedness” was paid in full, the ruling said. Mr. Justice personally guaranteed those obligations. The companies paid only $5.75 million of the collateral and stopped paying premiums in 2021. Lexon demanded payment from Mr. Justice in 2023.

A federal district judge entered judgment for $25 million plus interest, covering $14 million in unpaid collateral and $11 million in premiums. Mr. Justice challenged the premium portion, arguing that “Total Indebtedness” was a fixed $3.5 million, that his guaranty capped his liability at that figure, and that the agreement expired in 2021.

Judge Eric E. Murphy, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, rejected all three arguments under West Virginia contract law. Read as a whole, he wrote, the agreement and the guaranty show the debt was meant to grow as the companies missed new payments.

He also said the companies’ financial troubles gave no basis to rewrite the deal in their favor. “At day’s end, we may not consider whether it was ‘wise or unwise, reasonable or unreasonable, usual or unusual’ for the Companies to sign the Amended Agreement or for Senator Justice to sign the guaranty,” the judge wrote. “Rather, we must interpret those contracts as written.”

In 2025, Forbes magazine declared that Sen. Justice, once a billionaire and a former governor of West Virginia, had a net worth of “less than zero” due to collapsing coal revenue and compounding business liabilities.