The state Supreme Court has supplied ammo to the ongoing battle over West Virginia's business climate and judicial system by refusing last month to accept appeals of a pair of civil verdicts together worth more than $664 million.

But parties on both sides of those debates question whether either case fits neatly into the narrative that casts the Mountain State as hostile to business and prone to award "jackpot" jury awards. So does the author of an upcoming West Virginia Law Review article that examines the continuing push to label the state a "judicial hellhole."

"Going only by the publicly available information, despite the size of the disputes involved, these cases are not evidence of a legal system that is hostile to business," said Elizabeth Thornburg, a visiting law professor from Southern Methodist University.

What the court's decisions may instead reveal is a potential gap in the state's judicial system, created by the absence of an intermediate appeals court and the absolute discretion wielded by its Supreme Court when considering which cases to hear.

"The automatic right of appeal is something that we don't have in West Virginia," said Steve Roberts, president of the state Chamber of Commerce. "We think that is one of the small handful of tweaks to our legal judicial system that could help make us more like other states."

In separate decisions, the state's sole appeals court voted May 23 not to hear appeals of a $260 million judgment against Massey Energy Co. and a subsidiary, and a $404 million verdict against NiSource Inc. and Chesapeake Energy Corp. The latter may be a record amount for a West Virginia jury.

The Supreme Court has total discretion over accepting appeals. It refused nearly 62 percent of the petitions it considered between 2000 and 2006, the latest year for available figures. In 2006, its rejection rate reached nearly 84 percent.

West Virginia's is also the only "court of last resort" with such complete discretion among the 10 states lacking an intermediate appeals court, according to the nonpartisan National Center for State Courts. Of the rest, all must accept civil appeals except New Hampshire, which is mandated to accept only capital murder death penalty cases.

Roberts said that may explain why Chesapeake responded to the court's refusal of its appeal by ditching plans to build a $35 million regional headquarters in Charleston.

"Without taking a position as to whether somebody's right or somebody's wrong, we can appreciate their frustration over not being able to, in their words, challenge the verdict," Roberts said. "In many other states, and perhaps most other, they would have an automatic right."

Teresa Clark Toriseva, president of the West Virginia Association of Justice, supports the concept of a midlevel appeals court, but she disagrees that the two refusals reflect any shortcomings in the system.

The state Supreme Court has supplied ammo to the ongoing battle over West Virginia's business climate and judicial system by refusing last month to accept appeals of a pair of civil verdicts together worth more than $664 million.

But parties on both sides of those debates question whether either case fits neatly into the narrative that casts the Mountain State as hostile to business and prone to award "jackpot" jury awards. So does the author of an upcoming West Virginia Law Review article that examines the continuing push to label the state a "judicial hellhole."

"Going only by the publicly available information, despite the size of the disputes involved, these cases are not evidence of a legal system that is hostile to business," said Elizabeth Thornburg, a visiting law professor from Southern Methodist University.

What the court's decisions may instead reveal is a potential gap in the state's judicial system, created by the absence of an intermediate appeals court and the absolute discretion wielded by its Supreme Court when considering which cases to hear.

"The automatic right of appeal is something that we don't have in West Virginia," said Steve Roberts, president of the state Chamber of Commerce. "We think that is one of the small handful of tweaks to our legal judicial system that could help make us more like other states."

In separate decisions, the state's sole appeals court voted May 23 not to hear appeals of a $260 million judgment against Massey Energy Co. and a subsidiary, and a $404 million verdict against NiSource Inc. and Chesapeake Energy Corp. The latter may be a record amount for a West Virginia jury.

The Supreme Court has total discretion over accepting appeals. It refused nearly 62 percent of the petitions it considered between 2000 and 2006, the latest year for available figures. In 2006, its rejection rate reached nearly 84 percent.

West Virginia's is also the only "court of last resort" with such complete discretion among the 10 states lacking an intermediate appeals court, according to the nonpartisan National Center for State Courts. Of the rest, all must accept civil appeals except New Hampshire, which is mandated to accept only capital murder death penalty cases.

Roberts said that may explain why Chesapeake responded to the court's refusal of its appeal by ditching plans to build a $35 million regional headquarters in Charleston.

"Without taking a position as to whether somebody's right or somebody's wrong, we can appreciate their frustration over not being able to, in their words, challenge the verdict," Roberts said. "In many other states, and perhaps most other, they would have an automatic right."

Teresa Clark Toriseva, president of the West Virginia Association of Justice, supports the concept of a midlevel appeals court, but she disagrees that the two refusals reflect any shortcomings in the system.

"An appeal is only to review whether any error was committed during a trial," said Toriseva, whose group represents the state's plaintiff lawyers.

"If all the rules were followed, a jury's verdict is to be honored and enforced," Toriseva said. "An appeals court does not substitute its judgment for that of the jury or the lower court."

Toriseva noted that each refusal was reached unanimously. Each also featured one of the Supreme Court's two members who have championed limits to lawsuits and jury awards: Justice Brent Benjamin and Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard.

Maynard helped reject the petition from NiSource and Chesapeake, which appealed a 2007 Roane County verdict won by thousands of property owners allegedly underpaid royalties for their leased natural gas rights. He also wrote the 2006 ruling, also unanimous, that cleared the way for the class-action lawsuit to reach a jury.

Answering questions on the law posed by the trial judge, Maynard wrote that more than half the leases involved did not clearly state that the producers could deduct post-production expenses from royalties.The plaintiffs in that class-action include landholding companies and other employers, while their lawyers include corporate defense firms and others typically on that side of the "tort" debate.

"There are elements of the business community on both sides of this case," said Roberts. He added that while his group seeks "a fairly low number of tweaks" to the state's court system, "We don't think that attacking the plaintiff's bar is what needs to happen. We don't think that being enormously negative about the state's judiciary is what needs to happen."

Toriseva cited how the $260 million Massey judgment was won by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. It also involved contracts, with the steelmaker alleging Massey and Central West Virginia Energy reneged on coal supply agreements.

"Wheeling-Pitt, a very important business to the Northern Panhandle, was protected," she said. "What's happening here is our juries and our courts are saying, 'We're going to enforce written contracts.'"

Thornburg, the John T. Copenhaver Visiting Chair at WVU law school, also noted the nature of the two cases and the presence of businesses on both sides.

"Both are essentially business disputes, not the kind of product liability case that 'tort reform' advocates talk about," Thornburg said. "No one likes losing a multimillion-dollar case, but that doesn't make the state a hellhole."