Pay Car Mining of McDowell County, West Virginia, recently filed a request with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission to reopen final orders that include $US26,777 in civil penalties, claiming it missed the 30-day deadline to contest them because of an “inadvertent mistake”

MSHA said that five different operators controlled by James Justice II – which owns Pay Car as well as 17 other mine operators and 33 mines – have filed a total of 15 requests for the same action between April 2008 and February 2009. Of those 15 requests, the total associated penalties are $608,182.

Other Justice-controlled complexes with pending requests include Double Bonus Coal, Dynamic Energy, Frontier Coal, Bluestone Coal and Justice Highwall Mining.

“Pay Car Mining has not submitted any evidence to support its claims,” MSHA deputy assistant secretary for operations Michael Davis said.

“Furthermore, we believe the operator’s conduct in this case is part of an overall pattern of carelessness in ensuring that penalty assessments are timely contested or paid.”

In response to Justice’s move, MSHA has asked the commission to deny the 15 pending requests, most of which it objects to. If the cases are reopened, MSHA has asked that it be on condition of full payment of all fines, to be refunded by the agency after the cases have been reviewed by an administrative law judge.

None of the Justice complexes were on last week’s pattern of violations warning list issued by MSHA. The agency released the names of 15 operations, 13 in coal, that are being targeted by federal regulators for potential instances of “recurrent significant and substantial violations”, which MSHA defines as “one that could reasonably be expected to lead to a serious injury or illness”.

Kentucky mines topped that list with five operations, followed by West Virginia with four, Virginia with three, and one each in California, Nevada and Utah.