A coal company’s attempt to sue Oakland for $1 billion dollars fell flat this week after a federal judge ruled that the case didn’t belong in his courtroom.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton, who serves in the Western District of Kentucky, agreed with the city of Oakland and dismissed a lawsuit brought by Insight Terminal Solutions, or ITS. ITS had filed the lawsuit in 2024, claiming the city drove it into bankruptcy by interfering with its lease to redevelop part of the former Oakland Army Base into a coal export terminal.
ITS argued that the case belonged in Kentucky because that’s where the company had filed for bankruptcy four years earlier, and this legal dispute with Oakland was related. But in his ruling, Beaton cited a federal law that gives judges broad discretion to abstain from hearing a bankruptcy-related proceeding in favor of punting it to a state court…