A disbarred Manhattan lawyer who pleaded guilty to statutory rape has sued the American Express Co. for giving police credit card information he says led to his capture.

James Colliton was arrested in February 2006 near Toronto, where prosecutors say he fled after being indicted on charges of having sex with underage girls.

The 44-year-old Colliton said Monday that American Express violated its agreement to withhold customer information from third parties. The lawsuit seeks an unspecified sum.

"James Colliton, once a $500,000-a-year tax lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, contends the credit card company breached its rules by telling authorities that he had used the card in February 2006 to pay for gas in Ontario, Canada," according to the N.Y. Daily News.

At the time, Colliton was wanted on statutory rape charges. The New York Post says he later pleaded guilty   Colliton pleaded guilty in October 2007 and was sentenced to three concurrent one-year terms.  He spent 19 months in a New York prison.

But Colliton tells the Daily News that he wasn't running from the cops when Canadian authorities took him into custody. "You're not a fugitive if you sign into a major chain hotel using your driver's license and your American Express card," he says.

American Express spokeswoman Joanna Lambert says company officials haven't seen the lawsuit and can't comment.