In a state court venue for a battle for control of The Greenbrier Hotel, lawyers for Senator Jim Justice and his family business continue to press for a preliminary injunction over allegations that debt on the historic resort was transferred improperly.

“Defendants have no interest in collecting on the Loans; they want to take possession of The Greenbrier,” wrote lawyers for the Justices.

The Justices are in a fight with White Sulphur Springs Holdings, an affiliate of Omni Hotel & Resorts, over control of The Greenbrier. The battle recently got the attention of The Wall Street Journal in a story headlined “Two Texas Billionaires, a U.S. Senator and the Battle for ‘America’s Resort.’”

A federal court case has been paused to see through a potential $500 million financing agreement that could pay off the debt.

But a separate state case remains active.

In that one, the owners of The Greenbrier have sued longtime lender Carter Bank & Trust and the owners of White Sulphur Springs Holdings, Texas billionaires Robert and Blake Rowling, on claims that they colluded and improperly used insider information to gain control of the Greenbrier Hotel debt.

“Plaintiffs are not challenging Carter’s general right to assign the Loans,” wrote lawyers for the Justices.

“Rather, Plaintiffs contend that this particular assignment was unlawful because it was facilitated by fraud, breaches of multiple contracts that prevented such an assignment, and the misappropriation of confidential information and trade secrets, which the TRT Defendants obtained under false pretenses, used to facilitate their acquisition strategy, and then sought to leverage through creditor remedies to seize The Greenbrier.”

Lawyers for Carter Bank and White Sulphur Springs Holdings each have taken positions that the state case is without solid grounding. They maintain that the Justices lack standing to challenge the sale of the loans and have failed to demonstrate irreparable harm because their financial difficulties are entirely self-inflicted.

On Friday, lawyers for the Justices filed a reply and wrote, “Defendants’ opposition briefs are works of distraction, advancing a counterfactual narrative and mischaracterizing Plaintiffs’ requested relief.

“Conspicuously absent from those briefs, however, is any serious dispute that Defendants’ actions are inflicting serious irreparable harm on Plaintiffs and The Greenbrier.”

Lawyers for the Justices want to maintain the current operational status of The Greenbrier while the court considers the underlying legal claims. They argue that without an injunction, the holding company’s actions will cause irreparable harm to the resort’s reputation, vendor confidence and future business bookings:

“Regardless of what reputation The Greenbrier previously had (or why), Plaintiffs’ undisputed evidence directly links recent customer and vendor concerns about The Greenbrier to Defendants’ conduct — false assertions that The Greenbrier is in disrepair, freezing accounts, public declarations of default, and the threat of additional creditor remedies.”

The lawyers for the Justices maintain the injunction is necessary because “The public interest is disserved by allowing a party who obtained contractual rights through fraud, contractual breaches, and anticompetitive conduct to exercise those disputed rights before the Court has determined whether that party validly owns those rights.”

The state case was filed in Greenbrier County, home of the resort and Senator Justice.

Both the holding company and the bank cite improper venue, contending that mandatory forum selection clauses in documents signed by the Justices require these disputes to be heard in Virginia or New York rather than West Virginia.

The Justice family argues that the Circuit Court of Greenbrier County is a proper venue for the lawsuit and that objections are “meritless.”

The Justices contend that various overlapping and conflicting forum-selection clauses in the relevant loan and confidentiality agreements point to different jurisdictions. So the Justices argue that these conflicts preclude the enforcement of any single clause, making their chosen forum in West Virginia appropriate.

“On the merits, Defendants say surprisingly little about Plaintiffs’ core allegation that Defendants, through misappropriation of confidential information and violations of contractual standstill restrictions, orchestrated an unlawful sale of the Loans in an effort to seize The Greenbrier,” wrote lawyers for the Justices.

“Instead, Defendants rely on meritless jurisdictional, venue, standing, and collateral-attack arguments. None will succeed.”

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Efforts to expand career pathways for West Virginia high school students continue to grow.

West Virginia Director of Career Technical Education Adam Canter shared a positive update about the Classroom 2 Career (C2C) initiative during the June state Board of Education meeting.

Canter said the C2C initiative was launched around five years ago with a clear goal in mind: to prepare West Virginia youth for the workplace.

“It was basically 2.0 of what was Simulated Workplace, that was a national model for changing the classroom to being an actual simulated environment of what a student will experience in the actual real world.” Canter said.

Canter said C2C began with a simple question.

“How can we get students out of a simulated environment, actually get real business partners, and get them employed or at least to experience something that they’re going to be in the real world?” Canter described.

A database was launched toward achieving that goal. Canter said the database was a communication tool for teachers, students, and administrators to log all of the activities they were already doing.

Canter reported that in 2025, more than 2,000 students worked in C2C apprenticeships. Those students garnered more than $5 million and worked more than 350,000 hours through 600 business partners that work with Classroom 2 Career.

The West Virginia Department of Education had been preparing students through its Career Technical Education (CTE), but Canter said not enough people knew about it. The collection tool addressed that issue by becoming a hub for CTE and related information.

Canter said C2C has two categories that activities fit into — “community” and “on-the-job training.”

The community category refers to work requiring collaboration, Canter explained.

“(It’s) where we track when a student does something out of the classroom with some type of partner,” Canter said. “So maybe they take a food truck and they work on a Friday night, and the classroom works as an entity, as a business partner, they get experience what it would be like to own that food truck, or they get to change the oil, or they get to cut someone’s hair in cosmetology, and we track all of those hours under a category called ‘community.’”

The second category is “on-the-job” training.

“This is what we historically think of as real experience, a student gets hired, they go to work,” Canter said. “In that category, that’s what we try to focus most of our reporting on, because that’s what people think of when they think of an internship or an apprenticeship.”

Canter emphasized that the C2C initiative is a big deal, and he’s excited to see it continue to grow. He mentioned that CTE’s impacts are occurring all around the state, including healthcare partnerships. Canter said 51 schools are gotten on board with pipelines that enable students to complete clinical work, right at hospitals.

Canter mentioned three partnerships in particular that exemplify the WVDE’s goals.

The Governor’s School of Entrepreneurship (GSE) program is coming up in July on Marshall University’s campus. The program has been redesigned for this year, becoming an immersive 10-day experience to teach students about starting businesses.

Hope Gas and the West Virginia Department of Education’s partnership for the Hope Pathways program in Logan County. The program is open for high school juniors and seniors, providing them with the technical skills required for careers with Hope Gas and related sectors. The idea behind the initiative is to boost West Virginia’s workforce by keeping its homegrown talent closer to home.

Most recently, the WVDE and Marshall University announced an aviation partnership to launch the AIRWV (Aviation Innovation and Readiness West Virginia) Pathway. AIRWV will give students from Grades K-12 introductions into the aviation industry. The partnership is for five years, with the idea of continuing it further into the future.

Five pilot counties are already on board with the AIRWV Pathway: Barbour, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, and Logan. The WVDE said those counties will roll out the program in Fall 2026.

Canter said these partnerships impact students of all ages.

“The neat things about these three is that we’re starting in elementary school,” Canter said. “We’re doing awareness campaigns with teachers; we’re creating universal trainings that we’re all speaking the same language. We’re moving that training to middle school, so they’ll do exploration of careers in that field. Then, in high school, we’re tailoring it to what post-secondary opportunities and employment opportunities exist.”

Canter mentioned a Wetzel County student’s story with Classroom 2 Career as a shining example of the initiative. Canter said the student, John Wade, received an internship at American Heavy Plates, and his school took him to work, to get a social security card, and all the components he would need.

Canter noted said the company decided to hire Wade, and his career is all thanks to the Classroom 2 Career apprenticeship.

State Board of Education Vice President Victor Gabriel praised Canter for his enthusiastic report.

“I feel your excitement clear up here, you’re one of those rare people that loves what they do,” Gabriel said. “I’m sure that’s not your only success story, I’m sure there’s thousands.”

Gabriel emphasized that career readiness should be a big priority for the state board.

“Because not everybody is college material,” Gabriel said. “I think that’s an area that we really need to concentrate on.”