A courtroom defeat that began as a corporate counterattack has now turned into an existential threat for one of America’s most prominent human-rights litigation outfits.
Washington attorney Terry Collingsworth is urging a federal judge to wipe away a racketeering verdict tied to a years-long legal war with coal giant Drummond. If the ruling survives, the financial fallout could climb to a staggering $256 million — a figure Collingsworth says his firm cannot survive.
“There’s no realistic way we could pay even a fraction of it,” he said while describing the pressure now hanging over his practice, International Rights Advocates.
For decades, Collingsworth built a reputation suing multinational corporations accused of abuses overseas. His legal campaigns stretched from Latin America to Southeast Asia, including a long-running case against ExxonMobil over allegations tied to violence around gas operations in Indonesia. That matter ended in settlement shortly before trial in 2023, with the company denying wrongdoing.
But the tables turned in litigation involving Drummond, the Alabama-based mining company that accused Collingsworth and others of constructing fraudulent lawsuits around alleged links between the company and Colombian paramilitary violence.
Drummond filed its racketeering case in 2015, arguing that witnesses were improperly paid and coached into providing false testimony in earlier human-rights litigation connected to the company’s Colombian operations. Years earlier, a federal jury had already cleared Drummond of liability in a related lawsuit.
In January, a jury in Birmingham delivered a crushing blow to Collingsworth and his firm. Jurors awarded Drummond $68 million on racketeering claims and another $52 million connected to allegedly defamatory statements made to Dutch authorities and Japanese business partners.
Last month, U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor expanded the danger significantly by tripling the racketeering damages under federal RICO law, pushing the potential judgment toward the quarter-billion-dollar mark.
Collingsworth’s legal team responded with a broad post-trial attack on the verdict. Court filings accuse Drummond of failing to prove key elements of racketeering and defamation, including the requirement that certain statements were made with actual malice.
The filings also accuse Judge Proctor of committing repeated legal errors during the lengthy proceedings and argue he should have stepped aside from the case entirely because of alleged bias.
Drummond, however, is showing no sign of retreat.
Attorney Trey Wells, representing the mining company, said the company intends to aggressively pursue collection efforts against Collingsworth, his firm and related defendants in multiple jurisdictions, including Colombia and the Netherlands.
According to Wells, the verdict represented more than financial recovery. He described the case as an effort to restore the company’s reputation after years of accusations.
The next major filing in the case is expected Monday, when Drummond formally answers Collingsworth’s request to overturn the verdict.
Elsewhere in Washington’s legal and political orbit, new ethics disclosures tied to appointments by President Donald Trump revealed sizable payouts to lawyers tapped for senior diplomatic and government roles.
Michael Kavoukjian, nominated as ambassador to Norway, disclosed receiving more than $4.3 million as a final partnership distribution from White & Case.
Meanwhile, Brock Dahl reported earning more than $1 million this year from Freshfields before his nomination to serve as the State Department’s top lawyer. His disclosure listed clients ranging from Google and Visa to CrowdStrike and General Dynamics.
Another courtroom battle is unfolding in Oregon, where grocery chains Kroger and Albertsons are resisting a $10 million fee request from state attorneys general involved in blocking their proposed merger.
The companies argue that the states played only a supporting role while the Federal Trade Commission carried the case. Their filing calls the requested legal fees unprecedented, noting that state attorneys general have rarely — if ever — recovered such massive sums after preliminary merger injunctions in federal court.
