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FeedGee and Massey Energy
The world has focused on the safety record of Virginia-based Massey Energy following the West Virginia explosion that killed 29 coal miners in April. According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, there have been hundreds of violations each year at the Upper Big Branch mine, the site of the disaster, since 2005, including some 500 citations last year alone. And for much of that time, Ohio State president Gordon Gee, a former member of the Massey board of directors, headed a panel charged with overseeing safety policies and procedures at the company.
In May 2009, Gee, a former president of West Virginia University, stepped down from the Massey board while under pressure from environmentalists critical of the company’s mining practices, including the removal of mountaintops with dynamite. Until then, however, Gee, a director since 2000, chaired the board’s safety, environmental and public policy committee. The panel added the safety component after two miners died in a January 2006 fire at Massey’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine, says Pittsburgh attorney Bruce Stanley, who represented the families of the dead miners in a lawsuit filed against Massey.
Beyond that, however, little is known about Gee’s safety role. He’s been reluctant in the past to talk publicly about Massey, and when Columbus Monthly contacted Ohio State for comment, Shelly Hoffman, the head of media relations at the university, referred questions to the company (Shane Harvey, Massey’s general counsel, didn’t return a phone message).
Stanley got a chance to question Gee about his safety responsibilities, though it wasn’t easy. “They fought like hell to keep us from being able to depose president Gee,” he says. The deposition occurred in July 2008 in Columbus shortly after Gee’s son-in-law, Allan Moore, died from injuries suffered in a motor-scooter crash, Stanley says. “I did not want to do the deposition because of obvious reasons,” Stanley says. “But [Gee] insisted on going forward. He said it would take his mind off things.”
What he said that day remains a mystery. “Defense counsel insisted on having it sealed,” Stanley says. “They did not want that deposition made public.”
