CHARLESTON – The Kanawha County Commission has voted to join five cities and the state in its lawsuits against West Virginia Paving for creating a de facto monopoly.
The commissioners voted unanimously on Oct. 19 to join the Charleston lawsuit, which was filed on Oct. 12 in Kanawha Circuit Court.
The complaints against West Virginia Pacing and its sister companies allege that they violated West Virginia’s Antitrust Act.
On Friday, the city of Huntington joined the lawsuits against West Virginia Paving Inc.; Southern West Virginia paving Inc.; Southern West Virginia Asphalt Inc.; Kelly Paving Inc.; Camden Materials LLC; American Asphalt of West Virginia LLC; American Asphalt & Aggregate Inc.; and Blacktop Industries and Equipment. Lawsuits have also been filed by Beckley, Bluefield, Parkersburg, Charleston and the West Virginia Department of Transportation-Division of Highways.
The suits allege that the paving companies charged the cities and the DOH 40 percent, and sometimes more, for asphalt and paving supplies than it should have been charging.
West Virginia Paving acquired at least 15 asphalt plants that had previously competed against each other for bids in the state, according to the suits.
The lawsuits note that that West Virginia Paving has more than 80 percent of the market share in the Huntington, Charleston, Bluefield, Parkersburg and Beckley areas.
The Charleston complaint alleged that the defendants’ “brazen statewide monopolization scheme in West Virginia, which has illegally inflated the cost of asphalt, the primary commodity used in building and repairing roads, parking lots, driveways, recreation courts and airport runways … and other miscellaneous products such as roofing.”
The defendants’ scheme unlawfully forced the class to pay at least 40 percent more for asphalt, inflated the defendants’ market share to over 80 percent in each class area and illegally extracted millions of dollars in overpayments from the class, according to the suits.
West Virginia Paving released a statement, calling the allegations in the lawsuits blatantly false and that the bulk of the price changes were directly related to the cost of the transportation and raw materials.
The DOH and the cities are represented by Benjamin L. Bailey and Michael B. Hissam of Bailey & Glasser LLP. Huntington also is represented by Rusty Webb of Webb Law Centre in Charleston.