Thomas B. Miller

This case involved a declaratory judgment action by the West Virginia Division of Highways (DOH) against Green Construction Company and its surety, American Insurance Company, seeking indemnification for a $1.2 million award that the Court of Claims had granted to subcontractor Elmo Greer and Sons due to delays and construction errors on an overlapping Interstate 64 project. The circuit court granted summary judgment to DOH, and the West Virginia Supreme Court affirmed. The court held that the indemnity provisions in Green's contract and performance bond obligated Green and American to cover DOH's losses from Green's performance failures. It further ruled that Green and American, who had received timely notice of the Court of Claims proceeding and an opportunity to defend, were bound by that award under principles of res judicata and collateral estoppel, and that their due process rights were not violated.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved surface landowners suing an underground coal mining company for damages to their water supply and land from subsidence, despite a waiver of subjacent support in a 1915 severance deed. After an earlier ruling that the waiver barred common-law claims, the plaintiffs amended their complaint to allege violations of the West Virginia Surface Coal Mining and Reclamation Act (particularly water protection and subsidence provisions) and parallel federal SMCRA requirements, seeking damages under the acts' citizen-suit provisions. The circuit court granted summary judgment to the defendant, holding that the water statute applied only to surface mining and that neither state nor federal law required protection against subsidence damage in this context. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Appeals reviewed the matter de novo, stressing that state law must be interpreted consistently with and no less stringently than federal law, and analyzed the specific statutory and regulatory language governing water rights and subsidence controls for underground operations.

environmentpropertybusiness & regulatoryfederal power

This case consolidated appeals from two convictions for first-degree sexual assault under W.Va. Code § 61-8B-3(a), where each victim was eleven years and eight months old at the time of the offense. The relators argued that the State failed to prove the victims were "eleven years old or less," asserting that the statutory language excludes anyone who has passed their eleventh birthday, and they sought relief on due-process grounds under Jackson v. Virginia. The court applied the plain-error doctrine to address the unpreserved statutory-interpretation claim and construed the phrase according to its common meaning, holding that a person remains "eleven years old" until reaching the twelfth birthday. It therefore concluded that the victims' ages fell within the statute's coverage and upheld the convictions.

criminal lawprocedure

In Graham v. Graham, the case concerned whether a term life insurance policy acquired during marriage as an employment benefit, which had no cash value, qualified as marital property under West Virginia law and was subject to a pendente lite order prohibiting the disposal of marital assets during divorce proceedings. Lawrence Graham changed the beneficiary from his wife Barbara to his uncle Simon after the order was entered, and upon Lawrence's death the proceeds were paid to Simon; Barbara then sued to recover them. The Circuit Court of Logan County granted summary judgment to Barbara, and the West Virginia Supreme Court affirmed. The court held that the policy constituted marital property because the statutory definition in W.Va. Code 48-2-1(e)(1) broadly encompasses all property and valuable interests acquired during marriage, including expectancies without present cash value, as illustrated by precedents involving contingent fees and other similar interests. It further reasoned that the beneficiary change violated the nondisposal order, so the proceeds were properly directed to the wife.

family lawproperty

The case arose from a 1988 car accident in which plaintiff Denise Miller, then a minor, was injured and her mother killed by an uninsured driver; the insurer paid its $50,000 single-limit uninsured-motorist coverage plus medical benefits to the mother's estate without court approval under W.Va. Code §55-7-7, then asserted that the limits were exhausted when Miller later sued for her own injuries. The circuit court certified two questions: whether the statutory minimums in W.Va. Code §§17D-4-2 and 33-6-31(b) ($20,000 per person/$40,000 per accident) preclude exhausting a single-limit policy by settlement with one claimant, and whether the insurer acted in good faith. The court held that the mandatory per-person and per-accident limits required by the financial-responsibility and uninsured-motorist statutes take precedence over contrary single-limit policy language, citing precedents such as Jones v. Motorists Mutual and Dorn v. Liberty Mutual, and that the absence of required court approval for the minor's interest raised a good-faith issue.

torts & liabilitybusiness & regulatory

This case concerned the priority of competing judgment liens against Larry Barber's inherited share of his mother Maude Barber's estate, following Larry's conviction for the voluntary manslaughter of his brother Charles. Grace Huang Barber, as administratrix of Charles's estate, obtained a 1991 wrongful-death judgment awarding her Larry's portion of the estate, while Rilda Sue Barber Call later secured a child-support judgment against Larry and sought to enforce it via writ of execution and suggestion on the estate's personal property. The circuit court had ordered distribution of Larry's share to Grace, treating its prior order as awarding the assets directly. The West Virginia Supreme Court held that Grace's lien had priority over the real estate due to its earlier date, but Rilda's properly perfected liens under W.Va. Code §§ 38-4-8 and 38-5-10 gave her priority over the personal property, and the 1991 order did not itself create a lien on personal assets without further enforcement steps; the court also upheld the use of Rule 60(a) to clarify the earlier order.

family lawpropertyprocedurecriminal law