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Peabody Energy says US protest song lyrics tarnish its name

Peabody Energy has won a excellence award in New Delhi

More than 40 years after it was first recorded, a strip-mining protest song is still bothering global mining company, Peabody Energy.

Peabody Energy wants a judge in the US to strike lyrics of the song from a federal lawsuit filed by environmental activists who claim they were jailed for demonstrating at a company shareholders meeting, according to a report by Associated Press.

The activists, Thomas Asprey and Leslie Glustrom, sued Peabody, the Northern Wyoming Community College District and a college district police officer. They claim campus police jailed them on the company’s orders during the 2013 shareholders meeting in Gillette.

Peabody has asked a federal judge not only to dismiss the case but to strike lyrics of the 1971 John Prine song, “Paradise,” which criticized Peabody’s mining practices in Kentucky, from their complaint.

Peabody says the lyrics tarnish its name.

The refrain in “Paradise” cites Peabody’s role in strip mining Muhlenberg County in western Kentucky.

 

“And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County

“Down by the Green River where paradise lay?”

“Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking

Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away”

 

The couple’s lawyer says he will fight to keep the lyrics.

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