MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) - Federal prosecutors want to further delay their involvement in a long-lingering civil lawsuit filed by former Massey Energy shareholders who say the coal company lied about its safety record to inflate stock prices.
Last summer, U.S. District Judge Irene Berger issued an order that allowed prosecutors to keep secret the evidence they've been gathering in a continuing criminal investigation of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster.
Investors led by the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment contend that Massey repeatedly lied about its safety record, artificially inflating stock prices between 2008 and 2010. They say shareholders had no idea of the company's abysmal record and history of violations until after the southern West Virginia mine exploded, killing 29 men in April 2010.
Massey has since been bought out by Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources.
The criminal investigation of the blast has spawned three prosecutions so far, and U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin argues it needs to be protected until he's finished.
Prosecutors have previously said in court filings that some individual defendants in the civil case "may be or may become" targets of the criminal probe. Among those individual defendants are former chief executive officer Don Blankenship, his successor, Baxter Phillips, and former chief operating officer Chris Adkins.
Berger's order was set to expire Tuesday, or when the government concluded its investigation.
Goodwin filed a motion late last week saying his team has made "significant progress" in the criminal case and secured the cooperation of several witnesses. Those witnesses, including former UBB superintendent Gary May and the former president of another Massey coal company, have in turn led to other witnesses, he said.
Former superintendent Gary May is set to enter a plea before Berger on Thursday in Beckley. He's charged with defrauding the federal government through his actions at the mine, which included disabling a methane gas monitor and falsifying records.
Former security chief Hughie Elbert Stover, meanwhile, is in prison in Kentucky, convicted of lying to investigators and ordering a subordinate to destroy documents during the investigation.
