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CHARLESTON -- A Kanawha County judge has denied a motion by attorneys for Gov. Jim Justice to submit questions to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals seeking clarification regarding a residency case filed against the governor last year.
Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Charles King also explained why he has allowed the case to continue.
King ruled Monday against a motion filed in August by attorney Mike Carey, representing Justice, and George Terwilliger, representing Justice as a citizen, that asked for a list of questions to be sent to the Supreme Court to clarify issues over the meanings of "residency" and how the court would enforce it.
King continued to grant a stay of the court proceedings brought in December 2018 by Delegate Isaac Sponaugle, a Pendleton County attorney acting as a private citizen. Sponaugle said he was happy to see his case proceeding.
"At the end of the day, my residency case is about facts and what the facts are," Sponaugle said on Friday. "In order to get the facts, you've got to go through the discovery process and then present what those facts are to the judge at an evidentiary hearing so he can make informed rulings based off the facts that are observatory. The governor does not want any facts presented to the judge."
Sponaugle expects Justice's legal team to file a writ of prohibition in an attempt to move the case from circuit court to the state Supreme Court since King ruled against submitting questions to the high court. Carey was not immediately available for comment.
"Counsel for the governor stated that they would seek a writ of prohibition against Judge King if he ruled that way; in essence that a circuit court has no power over the governor," Sponaugle said. "(King) put the stay in to allow the Supreme Court the weigh in whether or not they agree with that position or not."
King also granted a motion by Justice's attorneys for King to explain why he ruled in June against an earlier motion to dismiss the mandamus case against Justice. In his findings of fact also released on Monday, King said Sponaugle's writ of mandamus asking the court to require Justice to follow Article 7 of the West Virginia Constitution requiring the governor to reside in Charleston was appropriate.
"Assuming all of the alleged facts contained in (Sponaugle's) petition to be true, as this court is required to do, the petitioner sufficiently pleaded and provided theories under which relief could be granted," King wrote.
Sponaugle originally filed suit over Justice's residency in June 2018, but King threw out the case because Sponaugle failed to give the state a 30-day notice of filing the suit. A second suit filed with the Supreme Court was rejected in September 2018 before Sponaugle, after filing the 30-day notice, filed again in Kanawha County last December.
While Justice's attorneys have argued it should be either up to voters in an election or lawmakers through an impeachment process to determine whether Justice is following the Constitution, King said the court system also was an acceptable avenue.
"Waiting for a future election and waiting an impeachment procedure to take place...are not remedies that are as equally as convenient, beneficial and effective as this mandamus action," King wrote.