A federal judge won’t disturb a $256 million jury verdict in a long-running libel and RICO lawsuit against a plaintiffs’ lawyer who had charged an Alabama coal company with human rights abuses in Colombia.
“Defendants’ claim that the jury was confused is simply unsupported by the record,” Senior U.S. District Judge David Proctor wrote in his June 2 opinion, upholding what has been called one of the largest jury awards in Alabama history.
The case began more than a decade ago, after Collingsworth, who founded the International Rights Advocates law firm, sued Drummond Co. and other U.S. firms, accusing them of violating workers rights around the globe.
Birmingham-based Drummond, originally known as the Drummond Coal Co., has operated multiple coal mines in the U.S. and Colombia. It was blamed for murders of Colombians as well as other human rights violations.
The coal company pushed back and scored a major victory with the January jury verdict. Drummond, in the midst of years of litigation, sued Collingsworth, charging him and his law firm of paying witnesses huge sums and promoting false information, according to court records and news reports.
“This landmark verdict secured a resounding win for Drummond, which has long suffered under a cloud of heinous allegations that a jury has now unanimously determined were false,” the law firm said in a January statement to Al.com, a news site.
The New York Times noted in 2015 that Drummond and other accused corporations had turned the tables on Collingsworth and his aggressive litigation tactics by pursuing litigation of their own.
Collingsworth was previously a managing partner at the Conrad & Scherer law firm, which has offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; in Brevard, North Carolina; and in Ecuador. He has said that the payments to witnesses were not unusual in South America and were done to provide protection to people facing death threats because of their testimony, news sites have reported.
But Collingsworth apparently failed to inform the court in a timely fashion about the payments, the Times reported in 2015.
The federal jury in January awarded $52 million on Drummond’s defamation claim and $68 million on claims that Collingsworth’s actions violated the U.S. Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. The award was automatically tripled, per the RICO statute, to $256 million.
The rights advocate attorney asked for a new trial on multiple grounds. His attorneys told the judge earlier this year that he had limited ability to pay such an outsized award. But Judge Proctor dismissed those concerns, noting that while Drummond may be unable to collect, that is irrelevant to questions of liability.
“Moreover, the court has reason to question whether Collingsworth is as financially constrained as he claims,” the judge wrote last week.
At trial, Collingsworth testified that he had only one U.S. account—his only bank account anywhere in the world—which was blocked. But in 2011, an email referenced a Swiss bank account, the judge explained.
Two other defendants in the Drummond suit, the Conrad & Scherer law firm and its founding partner, settled RICO claims on the eve of the trial.
Collingsworth’s professional liability insurance carrier was not named in the litigation.
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