Protopapas
A seemingly exasperated U.K. judge called a South Carolina lawyer “the man with the bludgeon” who is ignoring a global injunction by asserting control over a British company that is subject to U.K. jurisdiction and has never done business in his state.
Justice Anthony Mann of the High Court of Justice decried actions by Peter Protopapas, who was appointed receiver over Cape Intermediate Holdings by a South Carolina judge and has used that power to sue other companies, including DeBeers and international mining concern Anglo American, over claims they conspired to hide liability for asbestos claims in the U.S.
Cape’s corporate parent, Altrad Group, sought an injunction blocking DeBeers from settling with Protopapas, but the U.K. judge refused, saying the diamond merchant was stuck “between a rock and a hard place.”
“In my view a settlement into which it would seem to have been bludgeoned is something they would be entitled to do even if the English law position is that the man with the bludgeon should not have had it in the first place,” Justice Mann said in an Oct. 20 ruling.
The settlements with DeBeers and co-defendant Anglo American leave Altrad and its owner, French billionaire Mohad Altrad, defendants in a trial that began yesterday in the court of Judge Jean H. Toal. Since Altrad has refused to participate and Judge Toal has already ruled all of the claims and evidence produced by Protopapas to be true, it is likely Judge Toal will rule in his favor. She is conducting it as a three-day bench trial.
Toal, a former chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court, was appointed chief of the state’s asbestos docket after she retired. Since then, she has repeatedly appointed Protopapas, a locally prominent personal injury lawyer who helps pick the state’s judges, as receiver over long-defunct companies with a commission to collect money from old insurance policies.
Toal allows Protopapas to keep a third of any money he collects for himself and place the rest in secretive trusts that he can disburse as fees to other lawyers or to pay asbestos plaintiffs.
Toal expanded her practice from appointing Protopapas receiver over defunct companies with no owners to out-of-state and even international companies that are fighting back. The battle between Protopapas and Cape is particularly heated, with Cape and Altrad winning judgments in the U.K., where they are based, that say Protopapas is committing torts by claiming to be in control of Cape.
The U.K. court ruled in September that Cape had released its corporate parent and other third parties and ordered Protopapas to cease suing them in Cape’s name and fined him more than $1 million. “So far that judgment and order have had no visible effect on the activities of Mr. Protopapas,” Justice Mann wrote in the Oct. 20 order.
Protopapas is suing Altrad and its owner for supposedly conspiring to evade liability for selling asbestos that was distributed in the U.S. from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Altrad bought Cape in 2017, however, and Cape never did business or held property in South Carolina. Protopapas is suing in Cape’s name under a receivership order that Altrad says is invalid because the plaintiff who supposedly sought it had settled all litigation months before Judge Toal received the application.
Judge Toal has ignored all such arguments and accuses Altrad of harassing Protopapas by suing him in the U.K. Protopapas has sued Altrad’s lawyers, however, as well as wresting a multimillion-dollar settlement from a law firm that resisted his takeover of another firm.
“This court should be careful not to suggest that it had somehow given up in the differences between this court and the South Carolina court,” Justice Mann said. He acknowledge Altrad’s concern Protopapas will use the money he gets from DeBeers to fund continued litigation against Altrad, saying it will “provide him with funds with which he can pursue his activities likely to embolden copycat tactics elsewhere, to the detriment of CIHL and principles of private international law.”
“It would be wrong to `feed’ an impostor,” the judge wrote. But “it would be very unfair and unjust to force De Beers to risk the significant financial and reputational risks which they seek to avoid.”
In a last-ditch appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court to halt the trial scheduled to begin Monday, Altrad said Judge Toal has “created international havoc in a matter in which South Carolina has absolutely no interest.” The only party in South Carolina is Protopapas himself, Altrad said, since Altrad and the plaintiffs are all from out-of-state.
