$256M Upheld. Collingsworth Declared One Bank Account. The Judge Asked About the Swiss One.

On June 2, 2026, Senior Judge R. David Proctor refused to move a single dollar of the $256 million verdict against human-rights lawyer Terrence Collingsworth. The ruling came in a 44-page memorandum opinion filed that afternoon in Drummond Co. v. Collingsworth, the consolidated defamation and RICO fight in the Northern District of Alabama. "Defendants' claim that the jury was confused is simply unsupported by the record," Proctor wrote. The numbers stand exactly where the jury left them: $52 million in defamation damages and $68 million in RICO damages, trebled to $204 million. Then, on page 43, Proctor reached Collingsworth's plea of poverty, and the opinion stopped being routine.

The denial closes the post-trial chapter of a case that inverted the usual caption. Drummond, the Alabama coal company Collingsworth spent more than a decade publicly accusing of financing Colombian paramilitaries, sued its accuser. In January, a Birmingham jury found Collingsworth and his nonprofit, International Rights Advocates, liable for defamation and civil RICO, finding the accusations false. Proctor's June 2 opinion denied their new-trial motion in full. A companion opinion entered the same day denied their motions for judgment as a matter of law. Nothing was remitted. Nothing was retried. Insurance Journal reported the ruling within the week, and the verdict is now a judgment moving toward enforcement.

The poverty passage is built from the trial record, not the judge's imagination. Collingsworth had argued the court should weigh his ability to pay before letting the award stand. Proctor answered with a transcript. At trial, Drummond's counsel confronted Collingsworth with his own text to Albert van Bilderbeek reading "My sole U.S. account is now blocked," then asked whether he held any undisclosed offshore account. "No, I do not," Collingsworth testified, confirming under oath that the blocked account was his only one, anywhere in the world. The opinion then cites a September 2011 email, produced by Frank Van Lint, referencing routing compensation "directly into Terry's account in Zurich." Proctor's conclusion carries the whole passage: "Moreover, the court has reason to question whether Collingsworth is as financially constrained as he claims." One line later he went further. "If Collingsworth maintained an undisclosed foreign account, his sworn denials at trial cast serious doubt on the credibility of his claimed financial hardship."

Collingsworth and International Rights Advocates gave the court their full menu. They argued that consolidating the defamation and RICO cases into one trial confused the jury and inflated the damages. They argued the $68 million RICO award outran the evidence and should be capped at $26,654,611.80, the figure Drummond itself sought at trial. Proctor answered with the defense's own exhibits: financial statements Collingsworth's side introduced on cross-examination showed Drummond's coal sales revenue fell by approximately $1 billion between 2012 and 2015. They argued the presumed defamation damages lacked evidentiary support, and that stacking treble RICO damages on punitive defamation damages was an unlawful double recovery. Proctor took the theories in order and rejected each one, writing of the confusion claim, "They are wrong." Separate verdict forms with special interrogatories kept the claims distinct, he found, and the two awards redress different injuries, reputational on one side and economic on the other.

The money path is wider than one defendant. The RICO award is trebled under 18 U.S.C. 1964(c), and Proctor held the judgment enforceable against any RICO-liable defendant for the full trebled amount, jointly and severally. That group includes IRAdvocates, which the jury found was a member of both the conspiracy and the enterprise, plus defaulted co-defendants Ivan Otero and Albert van Bilderbeek. "Collingsworth is not the only one on the hook as it relates to the RICO damages verdict," the opinion says. The June docket shows the collection arithmetic already running. On June 17, Proctor granted Drummond's motion to enforce set-off law, addressing how the settlements paid by Conrad & Scherer, William Scherer, and Francisco Ramirez come out of the number, and only after the verdict is trebled. On June 22, the parties stipulated to prejudgment interest.

What is still open matters just as much. RICO attorneys' fees were deferred at the June 17 hearing, per the minute entry. Final judgment entered the same day: $204 million on the RICO verdict against Collingsworth, IRAdvocates, Otero, and van Bilderbeek, set off by settlement amounts the court keeps under seal, with interest. No notice of appeal has been filed. That leaves Collingsworth a narrow fork. Take the judgment to the Eleventh Circuit. Negotiate with the company he spent a decade calling a paramilitary financier. Or hold his ground and let Drummond test the Zurich question in asset discovery, where sworn trial testimony about one account, anywhere, is already in the record.

The sue-the-plaintiffs-lawyer playbook now has a completed episode. Uber v. Simon & Simon, last seen surviving dismissal before Judge Mark Kearney in Philadelphia, is still in discovery. Greater New York Mutual's RICO case against Liakas Law sits at filed. Drummond's case is the one that ran the full distance: filed in 2015, tried to a jury, and upheld in full on June 2, 2026, at $256 million. The open thread is the one Proctor left on page 43. One declared account. One 2011 email about Zurich. The next filing that answers it will have to square the two.