NEW MARTINSVILLE – A circuit court judge allegedly brandished a handgun during a hearing earlier this year, leaving it pointed at an attorney from Texas during the proceedings.
Second Judicial Circuit Judge David Hummel was overseeing a trial in a case styled Huey et al. v. EQT regarding royalty payments to landowners.
Houston-based attorney Lauren Varnado was leading the legal team representing EQT. The incident in question occurred March 12 during a rare Saturday hearing involving only trial counsel.
Varnado
“In the moment, the places your mind goes to,” Varnado told The West Virginia Record. “I don’t know if it was reasonable to worry about the gun going off, but you do worry about it. And, you wonder if he would shoot you.
“You think to yourself, ‘He isn’t going to shoot you, right? Surely, he isn’t going to shoot me.’ But at the same time, accidents happen every day. Whether it was loaded or not, and I don’t know if it was or wasn’t, but gun safety was not being practiced.”
According to the Daily Beast website, Hummel initially denied such an incident happened. The website reported Hummel “whipped out his handgun, waved it in the air and left it on the bench with the barrel pointing directly at corporate lawyers who had irritated him.”
At first, Hummel told the Daily Beast that never happened. Then, he told the reporter he kept the gun, a Colt .45, in a secret drawer in his bench. Then, he said he was wearing a holstered gun under his robe during the trial the previous week. But he said it was a long, classic-looking revolver from the Wild West days called a Colt Peacemaker. Then, Hummel told the reporter he did show Varnado a first aid kit.
“But it was casual,” Hummel told the Daily Beast reporter. “I did show her a foiled packet and said this is blood coagulant. We have preparations for active shooter situations.”
Varnado tells a different story.
“The first time I saw Judge Hummel with a firearm was at the Huey pretrial conference at the Wetzel County Courthouse on March 1, 2022,” she said in an affidavit. “At the pretrial conference, Judge Hummel wore a black handgun in a holster on his hip with his judicial robe unzipped.”
During the trial, she said Hummel would walk around the courtroom with his robe unzipped and the firearm visible.
“I asked Judge Hummel during a break in trial about his firearm,” Varnado said in the affidavit. “Judge Hummel confirmed that the gun was a Colt .45 handgun. He wore the gun in a holster without exception throughout the trial.”
Varnado, who is the managing partner of Michelman & Robinson’s Houston office and member of the firm’s Commercial Litigation Practice Group, says she and her legal team hired ex-CIA officers as professional security to keep them safe during the trial following an incident in September 2020 when she was personally threatened in a New Martinsville restaurant by someone upset she was representing EQT in the case. The security team and a paralegal were not allowed to attend the hearing.
During that Saturday hearing, Hummel asked Varnado why she had hired security. Then, she says he stood up, opened his robe, pulled his gun out of the holster on his hip and held it in his right hand.
“I promise you, I’ll take care of them,” Hummel said, according to a court transcript. “We were never told these folks were security until most recently. …
“I got this man (referring to one of the security team members) here carrying a man purse, which I make fun of him every damn day for wearing such a sissy-ass contraption. And I hear he has blood coagulant. I have blood coagulant up here too, and I’ve got lots of guns. Like, bigger ones too.”
That’s when Hummel pulled out the gun.
“As Judge Hummel reached for his firearm, he said, ‘Aren’t me and my guns and security enough?’ Varnado’s affidavit states. “’My guns are bigger than your security’s guns!’ He pointed the barrel of the gun – first, at the table where defendants’ counsel, David Dehoney and Jennifer Hicks, were seated, and then, at the podium where I was standing.
“Judge Hummel then set his gun down on the judicial bench and deliberately rotated the firearm (as it laid on the bench) until the barrel of the gun was pointing directly at me.”
Varnado said she told Hummel her security detail kept her and her team safe when they weren’t at the courthouse. She says she also explained the restaurant encounter to him. Hummel then asked why she hadn’t told him she had been threatened. She said she hadn’t done so because it wasn’t on court property, wasn’t during a court proceeding and didn’t involve court officers.
Hummel then changed the subject, Varnado says, but the handgun remained on his bench pointed at her for the duration of the hearing.
“During the hearing, I was in shock,” her affidavit states. “The events were playing in slow motion. I was genuinely afraid for my physical safety and the safety of my colleagues. I doubted that Judge Hummel would intentionally shoot me in the courtroom that day, but I was worried that the gun would go off and it was pointed directly at me.
“I was also scared that Judge Hummel would order myself and/or Jennifer Hicks to go back to his chambers and that we would not be able to say no. It was terrifying.”
Varnado says she contacted the FBI’s Pittsburgh office immediately following the hearing. After that phone call, she made a written report to the FBI via email. The next day, she says she had a second phone call with the FBI. On March 16, she met with the FBI in Pittsburgh.
She says she didn’t report the incident to the state Judicial Investigation Commission or any law enforcement in West Virginia because “we were – and still are – afraid.”
Varnado’s affidavit also says Hummel was “extremely abusive.”
After EQT moved to disqualify him from the case because of conflicts, she says he constantly brought it up at trial. EQT had noted Hummel’s parents receive gas and oil royalties and that those could be passed to him in the future. The state Supreme Court did not make Hummel recuse himself from the case.
“He made no attempt to hide his disdain for me,” Varnado said. “He constantly yelled at me and Jennifer Hicks throughout the trial.
“Judge Hummel used profanity and ridiculed counsel from the bench. At least once, he yelled at me in front of the jury, saying I am ‘despicable’ and that the court ‘deserved better than this bullshit.’”
She says she also saw Hummel gesturing to court reporter Holly Kocher to go on or off the record.
“Judge Hummel’s questions about our security and my disclosure of the threats to my personal safety in September 2020 are not included in the certified transcript of the March 12, 2022, hearing,” Varnado says in the affidavit. “I assume that Judge Hummel waved Ms. Kocher off the record before he brandished his firearm at the hearing.”
Varnado said she has never seen a judge behave in such a manner.
“I have litigated cases across the country and have never witnessed an individual in a courtroom – much less the presiding judge – behave in such an aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful manner,” her affidavit states. “I am horrified that a judicial officer in a court of law in the United States of America can brandish a Colt .45 handgun at counsel from the judicial bench and continue to preside over cases.
“More importantly, I worry about the safety of my co-counsel, Jennifer Hicks, and other members of her law firm (Babst Calland) who appear before Judge Hummel on a regular basis.
“Even though the Huey litigation has concluded and I do not have any cases pending in his court, I am still afraid that Judge Hummel will retaliate against me, my co-counsel and/or my client.”
Varnado elaborated further.
“The whole trial was insane,” she told The Record. “Why does a judge need to exert more power over us than he already can? Why would he need a gun in his courtroom?
“He took the Huey case extremely personally for some reason. I still don’t understand why. There was nothing super controversial about it, but he took it very personally.
“And yes, I am from out of state. I know what that means. I don’t really care if he likes me. I just tried to do the best job I could do that I was hired to do. But a courtroom, for a trial attorney, that is your workplace.
“My heart just breaks for the people who have to endure that every day. They don’t have a choice. They’re the real victims. It isn’t about me. If it’s happening to me, way worse things are happening to people who are pro se or indigent.”
But Varnado said she loves West Virginia.
“I want to be very, very clear because this is important to me,” she told The Record. “I love West Virginia. I love the people there. What’s happening with all of this is really wrong, and a lot of people just don’t care. There is not access to justice, period. And if you don’t have access to justice, there’s no due process.
“Honestly, I’ve felt safer hearing an arbitration case in a developing country than I did trying the Huey case in Wetzel County. It’s like we were walking with the scarlet letter. But, I do believe you have to try cases to do something about things like this. It wasn’t like it was under the table, which I’ve seen as well.
“But if you do it enough and try cases enough, you let the people talk. And the people will find the truth if permitted.”
After seven days of testimony, the Huey case was dismissed with a joint motion to dismiss with prejudice on May 18. The agreed dismissal order was entered June 1.
Hummel did not return calls seeking further comment, and the state Judicial Investigation Commission said it can’t confirm or deny whether it is investigating Hummel.
Hummel ran for the state Supreme Court in 2020. He first was elected as a circuit judge in 2008, and he was re-elected in 2016. He graduated from Marshall University in 1992 with a bachelor’s in business administration. He then went on to receive his law degree from the University of Oklahoma’s law school.
Before becoming a judge, Hummel worked for small law firms as well as large ones. He established Hummel Law in 2003. He was also an assistant prosecuting attorney for Marshall County for more than five years.
Wetzel Circuit Court case number 17-C-43
