In dueling court filings the Rowling and Justice families are at loggerheads. At stake is control of the Greenbrier Resort.

Robert Rowling and his son Blake flew to Greenbrier County, West Virginia in early April to meet with the state’s former governor, now U.S. Senator, Jim Justice at the Greenbrier Resort, which Justice has owned since 2009.

Just a week earlier, the Rowlings’ TRT Holdings had paid Greenbrier’s lender Carter Bank $289 million for the first lien debt on the historic resort.

Blake says he and dad Robert went to the resort hoping to negotiate a smooth transition. But the meeting wasn’t smooth. “We went there in good faith to try to work with them. The threatening nature in which they handled the meeting was not in the spirit of partnership and did not encourage us to try to make a deal.”

Naturally they’re at odds over the value. Jim Justice thinks the Greenbrier is worth more than the $360 million that he and his family owe on the loans TRT purchased, which according to court documents all came due on April 15. The Rowlings think it’s worth less than that but that doesn’t really matter because they believe the value of the Justices' equity in the business has already evaporated given their chronic habit of missing payments due to Carter. Over the past two years Carter had entered 14 forbearance agreements, allowing Justice to keep extending. Until now.

“They’ve breached the forbearance agreement. We’ve taken action,” says Blake. The Rowlings sued April 9 in the U.S. District Court in the southern district of West Virginia in Beckley against Jim Justice, his wife and son and all the businesses pledged against the debts. TRT is asking the court to appoint a receiver to take over the resort’s assets to prevent the Justices from “diverting substantial amounts of revenue generated from the Greenbrier Resort to their other, unrelated businesses.”

“The track record of these defendants more than justifies this request,” says the Rowlings’ complaint. (In a tangential nightmare story, their affiliated healthcare clinic on the grounds of the resort, Greenbrier Clinic, run by Jim’s daughter Dr. Jillean Justice, was sued last week in a federal class action case for providing faulty mammograms to more than 1,000 women over two years.)

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The Justices have not yet responded to the Rowlings’ federal court suit. But they did file their own complaint on April 12 against TRT and the Rowlings in the local circuit court of Greenbrier County.

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It’s not surprising given that in Jim Justice’s world, it’s always someone else’s fault.

Filed last weekend by the Justice Family Group (Jim 49%, son Jay 30%, daughter Jillean 21%), the suit claims the Rowlings conspired with Carter and “are attempting to snatch the Greenbrier resort from the local ownership of the Justice family by unlawful and deceptive means.”

Though the Rowlings continue to insist they are just Jim Justice’s latest lender, they have made no secret of their interest in the historic Greenbrier and its three golf courses. Their Omni Hotels boasts 50 locations with 28 golf courses and 20,000 rooms nationwide -- and it makes up the core of Rowling’s $8.8 billion fortune.

Justice claims the Rowlings began a plot against him in 2024 when they visited the Greenbrier as advisors to a private equity group that was thinking about investing. During that visit the Rowlings, claims Justice, had access on a confidential basis to Greenbrier financial information. Justice now accuses them of misappropriating trade secrets.

Justice further claims that Carter Bank reneged on an alleged 2025 deal that would have allowed Justice to pay everything off for $300 million and that he even had private equity investors ready to buy a minority stake in the Greenbrier, but that process would have taken another 12 months -- too long for Carter to keep extending Justice forbearance agreements over missed payments. A Carter spokesman declined comment.

Out of options, the Justices urge the court to help them “resist [Rowlings’] attempt to pilfer one of West Virginia’s crown jewels;” reverse Carter Bank’s sale; and order them to give Justice a final opportunity to pay off the debt that has grown, with interest, to $360 million.

Or at least make a deal. The Justices’ complaint references a tentative agreement between themselves and the Rowlings that would have seen TRT forgive $200 million of the current balance, and release liens on Justice coal mines, in exchange for a 50% stake in the resort plus general partner control. That hypothetical would have valued the entire Greenbrier at a minimum $400 million, or roughly $570,000 per room.

That’s in line with what hotel-owning real estate investment trusts have been paying for hotels recently, according to data from analyst Jonathan Falik at JF Capital Advisors. The few higher-valued recent hotel deals include two Four Seasons locations that sold for $1.9 million per room, Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu, for $1.4 million per room, 1 Hotel Central Park at $1.1 million per room, and a couple JW Marriotts for about $800,000 per room. Most transactions are far lower.

The Greenbrier, in a statement provided by a spokesperson, states that it “was and is in compliance with its obligations under the loans formerly held by Carter Bank” and that TRT, “a predatory out-of-state company” is trying to prevent the family from paying off the loans and steal the Greenbrier.

Blake would not comment on specifics only that lots of potential terms had been on the table but none of them erased the reality of a Justice default. “They’ve made a couple interest payments which does not bring them into compliance. We’re just a lender. If they can pay us back we’ll go away.” If not, Rowling appears prepared to wade in and do something that Carter bank and others have been unwilling to do for so many years: foreclose on Jim Justice.

Why? Because someone has to. “Banks aren’t in the position to take over control of assets. Banks kick cans down the road,” says Blake. “We are perfectly positioned to take the asset and restore it to former glory.”

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