The California lawyer who fought to keep sewer bills affordable for Jefferson County, Ala., residents throughout the 658,000-resident county's bankruptcy case wants the municipality to cover his $311,300 tab, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a payment request filed to U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Birmingham, Ala., bankruptcy lawyer Calvin Grigsby said that Jefferson County leaders probably wouldn't have been able to negotiate the $1.4 billion discount they got on the county's sewer bond debt without his efforts. Throughout the two-year bankruptcy case, Grigsby pushed county leaders to file corruption-related lawsuits against Wall Street firms to win an even bigger discount to the county's roughly $3.1 billion in bond debt, which the county began borrowing in 1997 to fix its leaky sewer system.
