Kentucky attorney wins administrative appeal in black lung dispute to secure fees
A Martin County attorney who helped two disabled Kentucky miners retain interim black lung benefits against coal operators trying to dispute the benefits has scored a major victory in court.
Inez attorney Leonard Stayton secured a ruling from a federal administrative appeals court that will require coal companies to pay attorneys’ fees and related costs required to defend the miners’ care. The decision marks a turning point in black lung disputes that have evolved recently to see coal operators go after the medical care miners received while they were defending their initial black lung claims.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Labor Department’s Benefits Review Board ruled that their former employers had created an adversarial relationship by contesting interim medical expenses, which required costly legal representation. Inez attorney Leonard Stayton, the panel ruled, should be recouped his costs by the two coal companies that disputed those claims.
For decades, coal operators have disputed almost all black lung diagnoses to avoid the massive, long-term financial liabilities they entail. While fighting those years-long disputes, miners can choose to receive interim medical care for their conditions. If they lose the appeals, however, they’re forced to pay back the cost of their treatment.
As underlying black lung disputes are proving more difficult for coal companies to win in the wake of the Affordable Care Act, many operators and their insurers have opted to fight interim care even when they lose the underlying claim. The result is a system that can discourage miners from seeking the benefits they’re due and attorneys from representing them.
“When judges deny fees to attorneys even after successful representation, access to counsel is threatened for miners who need it most,” said AppalReD Legal Aid Advocacy Director Evan Smith. “It prevents attorneys from taking these critical cases and hinders due process and access to justice for coal miners disabled by black lung.”
From 2001 to 2020, the number of black lung treatment disputes before DOL administrative law judges averaged fewer than four a year, according to data collected and analyzed by AppalReD. Beginning in 2021, however, a trend emerged showing an increased number of treatment disputes — well over a dozen a year by 2025.
That trend means significantly more work for the attorneys who represent them. When Stayton first billed the companies for his fees after successfully defending two disabled miners’ medical expenses, the companies refused and the administrative courts backed them up. The judges initially ruled that the same risk to the miners of overpayment proceedings didn’t exist in disputes over medical costs as they do for traditional benefits.
But in the appeals decision this month overturning those rulings, the panel found that “Employers created an adversarial relationship with Claimants because their actions placed Claimants’ interests at stake, which required their participation to protect those interests.”
“This case may encourage attorneys to take these types of cases,” Stayton told the Herald-Leader.
After spending his career as a coal miner in Johnson County and later being diagnosed with black lung, Ricky Sparks and later his widow Patricia prevailed against Hazard-based Locust Grove Inc. in 2016 for their federal benefits. In 2016, however, the company disputed more than $55,000 in medical treatment costs Sparks had received while his claim was under review.
Sparks learned that the attorney who had represented him for the first claim had retired, so he began working with Stayton. In 2024, two years after Sparks died, an administrative judge rejected the company’s position over the treatment dispute, but the judge later denied Stayton his attorneys fees.
Similarly, retired Floyd County miner Donald Ray Marcum won his initial claim for benefits in 2017 and Pikeville-based Excel Mining’s treatment dispute in 2024. The administrative law judge denied the attorneys’ fees in that secondary dispute, however, because it was against the federal government’s black lung trust fund and not the miner himself.
Locust Grove and Excel Mining could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
But the buck will eventually always stop with the miners, Smith said. Miners who are suffering from debilitating diseases caused by their work for coal operators rightly seek the treatment they need, even while those companies dispute evidence of black lung in the first place. When those operators later contest those medical expenses, it puts a strain on those miners who need and deserve legal representation.
