Murray Energy President Bob Murray certainly is willing to use the legal system when he feels he’s been wronged.  So the latest report from The Associated Press is probably not that big of a surprise:

A leading U.S. coal company is suing a rival with which it shared confidential business plans during a deal that later fizzled, saying the competitor used the proprietary details to buy up land in southern Illinois to thwart the accuser’s expansion plans.

Murray Energy Corp., a privately held Ohio-based company with operations in Utah, alleges in a lawsuit Saline County, Illinois, that Williamson Energy LLC breached terms of a confidentiality agreement in 2008 when Murray was trying to sell it operations in the southern Illinois.

The story explains:

Under the agreement, the lawsuit claims, Williamson pledged not to disclose or use any of Murray’s confidential information to acquire mineral or property rights related to Murray’s operations for eight years.

Murray claims Williamson has done just the opposite since 2009, buying cherry-picked parcels and mineral rights at above-market prices — in some cases, four times the going rate — “directly in the path” of Murray’s mining operations. Murray alleges it planned to buy or lease those tracts, that the parcels are too small to offer mining potential to Williamson, and that Williamson bought the land “to hinder MEC’s operations to gain an unfair competitive advantage.”

Oddly, what AP reporter Jim Suhr doesn’t seem to have explained — at least in none of the versions of the AP story I’ve seen — is that the target of Murray’s lawsuit, Williamson Energy parent company Foresight Energy, is owned by another fairly colorful coal operator, West Virginia native Chris Cline (see here, here and here).

I’ve posted a copy of Murray Energy’s press release about lawsuit here and you can read the full complaint for yourself here.