Billionaire Rennert Wants Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer to Pay $213 Million Judgment

By Chris Dolmetsch

Billionaire Ira Rennert took his fight over the looting of a Utah magnesium company in the years before it filed for bankruptcy to the lawyers that represented him, blaming their “careless and negligent errors” for a $213 million judgment.

A trustee for Magnesium Corp. of America had accused Rennert of diverting money from the company to help build a 29-bedroom mansion in New York’s Hamptons. The money never should have left MagCorp because massive environmental claims already threatened to push the company into bankruptcy, according to the trustee.

A federal jury in New York found Rennert and his company, Renco ...