Soul Full of Coal Dust by Chris Hamby

Author:Chris Hamby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

Footnotes

i When I later asked Bowman about this meeting, he said he didn’t recall it but added: “I remember John Cline. Very honest follow. I don’t remember that, but he was an upstanding guy and if he says it happened, I have no reason to doubt that.”

19

“Go Get ’Em”

By 2002, John had a law degree, but his financial situation had hardly improved. He had more than fifty thousand dollars in student loans to pay off and virtually no money coming in. While in school, he hadn’t been able to take new claims, so there was nothing in the pipeline. Even if he now accepted a prodigious caseload, it could be years before he saw any fees. Nor was he a licensed attorney yet. He continued as a lay representative until 2005, when he passed the bar exam on his third attempt.

Meanwhile, the impulse he sometimes called “the itch to build” returned. He and Tammy wanted a house that was a little larger and more private than what they had. They chose a 1.67-acre plot nearby in Piney View, and John drew up the plans. They hired a few subcontractors, but John and his two older sons, Jesse and Matthew, did most of the work. By March 2003, the 2,100-square-foot home was complete.

On the second floor—the law office of John Cline, soon-to-be Esquire (a term he never liked even after he’d earned it)—John began intensifying his efforts to force Jackson Kelly to change its tactics. He still wasn’t sure how to do that, but he had a few ideas. If he exposed more examples of what he’d found in his earlier cases, maybe it would finally reach critical mass. Maybe he could convince a judge not to let the firm off the hook after it conceded a case to avoid disclosure; maybe he could even get a judge to issue sanctions. Continuing to press case by case might be a long shot, but it seemed like the only option. Given the current administration and Congress, it was laughable to expect any sort of regulatory or legislative reform.

One of John’s first new cases presented an issue he hadn’t seen before. LaVerne DeShazo had filed a claim as a surviving spouse after her husband, William, had died in 2001. The Labor Department district director had found she was entitled to benefits, but Jackson Kelly, representing Consolidation Coal Company, had appealed. John began representing her in 2003.

William had been receiving benefits for the decade leading up to his death. After thirty-nine years of work for Consol, he had filed a claim, citing frequent wheezing and shortness of breath and writing, “I feel like I keep a chest cold all the time.” The medical exam paid for by the Labor Department had indicated complicated pneumoconiosis, and a Labor Department official had issued an award. Consol had decided not to continue fighting and had started paying benefits.

Jackson Kelly hadn’t been involved in that case. This time it was, and it had submitted numerous reports from doctors

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