Attorneys for Robert “Bob” Murray and the Murray Energy Corp. on Monday filed an objection in Marshall County Circuit Court to an amicus brief submitted last week by the West Virginia ACLU in Murray’s defamation suit against the late-night comedy show host John Oliver, HBO and Time Warner. Murray, head of the largest privately owned coal mine in the United States, took legal action over the June 18 edition of the late night TV show “Last Week Tonight,” which skewered the coal mining industry in general and Murray in particular.
The ACLU brief fails to establish the court’s jurisdiction, said plaintiffs attorneys Jeffrey Grove and David Delk of Grove, Holmstrand & Delk PLLC in their objection. And even if it had, the ACLU is clearly biased and thus not eligible to be a friend of the court, given the standard of impartiality required of nonparties to a suit wishing to file a brief in district court, the plaintiffs maintained.
