Kweku Joseph Hanson (born June 21, 1961, in

Accra Accra (; or ''Gaga''; ; Ewe: Gɛ; ) is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , had a population of ...

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

) graduated with an AB from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. It was chartered in 1794. The main Bowdoin campus is located near Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River. In a ...

, Brunswick, ME in 1985 and

Doctor of Jurisprudence A Juris Doctor, Doctor of Jurisprudence, or Doctor of Law (JD) is a graduate-entry professional degree that primarily prepares individuals to practice law. In the United States and the Philippines, it is the only qualifying law degree. Other jur ...

(Juris Doctor, or JD, approximately equivalent to

LLB A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

) degree from

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

School of Law in 1988. He was subsequently disbarred as an attorney and immigration law practitioner due to numerous complaints involving unethical conduct, non-delivery of service, maladministration of client's funds, as well as his conviction on charges of sexual assault, child pornography and tampering with witnesses.

Attempted class action lawsuit for distress caused by tire recall

In September 2000, he represented a West Hartford woman who sued Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. and the Ford Motor Co., seeking $60 million for the "humiliation, mental anguish and emotional distress" she had suffered while driving her Ford Explorer, which was equipped with recalled tires. Rhona Baugh-Seawright had been "panicky and scared" for the two months since she learned of the nationwide recall, according to Kweku J. Hanson, after filing the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Hartford. "Her lawsuit does not seek any redress for personal injury due to an accident," he said.

Class action lawsuit against Ocwen Federal FSB

In July 2002, Kweku Hanson initiated a class-action suit against Ocwen Federal FSB of West Palm Beach, Florida, where he was represented by fellow Connecticut attorney Paul Ngobeni. The 123-page lawsuit in Hanson v. Ocwen Federal Bank outlines a six-year running battle over late charges and fees. "It is clear that this is a pattern and practice of sheer piracy," Mr. Hanson said in an interview. He was joined in the suit by 57 individuals who claimed to have been injured by Ocwen. The lawsuit sought $1.5 billion in punitive and exemplary damages, but was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

South African Apartheid litigation

During 2003, he, along with Paul Ngobeni, his associate from the Ocwen class action suit, represented three plaintiffs who claimed to represent "all persons who lived in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

between 1948 and the present and who suffered damages as a result of apartheid." Punitive and compensatory damages in excess $400 billion were claimed from a "slew" of multinational corporations (including

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Citigroup Citigroup Inc. or Citi (Style (visual arts), stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services company based in New York City. The company was formed in 1998 by the merger of Citicorp, t ...

, GE,

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and many others) that did business in

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

for violations of international law subject to suit in United States federal district court under the

Alien Tort Claims Act The Alien Tort Statute ( codified in 1948 as ; ATS), also called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), is a section in the United States Code that gives federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits filed by foreign nationals for torts committed in vio ...

, 28 U.S.C. § 1350 ("ATCA"), and other jurisdictional provisions. Two other South African anti-apartheid lawsuits—the Khulumani ''et al.'', vs Barclays Bank ''et al.'', lawsuit; and the Ntsebeza vs Daimler Chrysler Corp lawsuit had previously been initiated separately during 2002. The Southern District Court of New York under Judge John E. Sprizzo found for defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint. That finding was partially vacated by the US Court of Appeal (Second Circuit) in an appeal first lodged in January 2006 and decided in October 2007 but by then Mr Hanson was no longer representing the claimants.

Sexual assault, arrest, and conviction

On November 1, 2007, Hanson pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault in the second degree; two counts of risk of injury to a minor child; one charge of possession of child pornography in the first degree; and two counts of tampering with a witness. He received a total effective sentence of twenty-five years execution suspended after he served six years incarceration followed by thirty years of probation. Prior to his sentencing Hanson attempted to withdraw his "guilty" plea, claiming, in part, that he didn't understand the criminal charges lodged against him and the court had failed to adequately apprise him of the sentencing range related to those charges during a process known as plea canvassing. The trial court judge denied his motion orally; later, the

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officially released a written opinion that upheld the decision.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hanson, Kweku 1961 births Living people Ghanaian emigrants to the United States Connecticut lawyers Disbarred American lawyers People convicted of child pornography offenses People convicted of statutory rape offenses Bowdoin College alumni University of Connecticut School of Law alumni Lawyers from Accra