The prosecution of prominent Washington lawyer Tom Goldstein has veered into an unusual appellate showdown involving pricey D.C. real estate, the constitutional right to counsel and a high-powered litigation funding firm that is set to be a witness in the case.
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“As a criminal defendant, I have a Sixth Amendment right to use ‘untainted’ assets that are necessary to pay the costs of my defense. The home itself is not ‘tainted,’” Goldstein said in his Nov. 26 appellate brief.
In any case, the government told the 4th Circuit, the home is being held as collateral for an appearance bond for Goldstein, who was deemed a flight risk by U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby.
Attorneys for Goldstein at Munger, Tolles & Olson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After getting turned down for one loan application in March 2021, Goldstein allegedly borrowed more than $5.6 million from a company that invests in litigation and used the funds to buy the Washington home. Goldstein never disclosed his personal debts to the funder, prosecutors said.
Goldstein revealed in his 4th Circuit brief last week that the funder is Parabellum Capital, a top litigation finance firm with offices in New York and Boston with more than $1.5 billion in investments as of last year. Goldstein said Parabellum placed no restrictions on the funds, which he used to buy the D.C. property and pay taxes.
Parabellum said in a statement that it is a witness in Goldstein’s criminal case and that the firm has not been accused of wrongdoing. “A minor part of the case involves small investments Parabellum made several years ago,” the firm said.
Goldstein’s bid to quickly sell the property faces an uphill battle given its connections to his bail conditions, white-collar experts said.
“The facts here are what’s going to be a problem for him,” said Michael Weinstein, who leads the white collar criminal defense practice at law firm Cole Schotz. Weinstein said he was a law school classmate of Goldstein’s at American University, but has no personal relationship to him and is not involved in the case.
“In my experience, the federal government typically prevails in cases where property is reasonably alleged to be a tainted asset,” said Arun Rao, a Mayer Brown partner and former deputy assistant U.S. attorney general.
Goldstein wants the 4th Circuit to reverse Griggsby’s ruling and allow the sale, or to order an evidentiary hearing on whether the house is a tainted asset.
A spokesperson for the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under the settlement, Google will add a new control allowing users to limit data shared in online ad auctions and will notify account holders via email and a dedicated webpage. The plaintiffs value these changes at $1.4 billion.
Google, which has denied any wrongdoing, counters that the lawsuit delivered minimal success. There was no settlement fund, and the company said it was implementing only modest changes largely duplicating existing privacy settings.
Google has proposed capping the fee award at about $14.3 million. The court will weigh the competing proposals at a February hearing. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Elizabeth Pritzker, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said Google’s filing “misstates the record and the law in an effort to diminish plaintiff’s counsel’s reasonable compensation for this significant result.”
– A federal judge in Philadelphia on Thursday rejected a bid by plaintiffs’ law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro to force his recusal from long-running litigation over the drug thalidomide.
The Seattle-based law firm argued that communications between U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond and court-appointed official William Hangley were improper, citing hundreds of hours of contacts between them.
“The law does not require a judge’s recusal because a party dislikes his rulings,” Diamond wrote.
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Reporting by Mike Scarcella
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