July 22, 2008 2:06 PM

Cravath, Swine and More: Lolita Lawyer Launches Another Civil Suit

Posted by Brian Baxter

James Colliton, a 44-year-old former Cravath, Swaine & Moore tax associate convicted of statutory rape and patronizing a prostitute, is seeking $4 million in damages from American Express for divulging his whereabouts to law enforcement officials.

According to a report by the New York Daily News, Colliton slapped the company with the civil suit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, claiming that the New York-based credit giant breached its own internal rules by telling authorities that he used his credit card to buy gas in Ontario, Canada, in February 2006.

Wanted on charges that he had paid a woman to have sex with her then 13- and 15-year-old daughters, Canadian law enforcement officials arrested Colliton on immigration charges at a motel in Grimsby, Ont., that same month. (He was then turned over to U.S. immigration authorities in Niagara Falls, N.Y., but mistakenly released shortly thereafter; New York City police detectives quickly arrested Colliton again in early March, after he registered under an alias at a Manhattan hotel.)

Cravath immediately fired the married father of five. Colliton spent the next 19 months in jail at New York's Riker's Island and in October 2007 was sentenced to time served after pleading guilty to second- and third-degree statutory rape and prostitution charges.

A call placed to Colliton at a Super 8 Motel in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., his current address, according to New York State's sex offender database, was not returned by the time of this post.

Colliton has been an active pro se plaintiff recently. In addition to the AmEx suit, Colliton has sued Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, assistant district attorneys Ann Donnelly and Rachel Hochhauser, and his former firm. (Colliton accuses the prosecutors of trying to have him roughed up in jail and seeks $1.45 million from Cravath for damages and back pay.)

Cravath litigation partner Robert Baron is representing the firm in the Colliton suit.

(Reporter Brian Baxter is a former employee of the New York County District Attorney's Office. While he previously worked for Donnelly, chief of the office's family violence child abuse bureau, Baxter had no involvement in the Colliton case.)

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