"The People v. the Coal Baron"

"Don Blankenship always knew exactly what he wanted during the years he ran Massey Energy, once the sixth-largest coal company in the United States. He had specific and emphatic ideas about how to operate mines, how to treat employees and how to deal with regulators. When he issued instructions, he wanted them followed to the letter, and this wasn’t just true about his business.

It was also true about his breakfast.

His former maid, Deborah May, discovered this when she was dispatched one morning to McDonald’s to pick up an egg-and-cheese biscuit for her boss. What she returned with had bacon in it, and that was a problem. Mr. Blankenship flung the bacon, Ms. May recalled in a deposition, part of a lawsuit over unemployment benefits.

'He grabbed my wrist,' she said, and gave her a quick lecture: 'Anytime I tell you to do anything, I want you to do exactly what I tell you to do and nothing more and nothing less.'"

David Segal reports for the New York Times June 20, 2015.

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