Jump to full article: Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, 2008-03-19
Author: Sid Salter
Intro: The seminar was entitled: "The Tobacco Settlement: Practical Implications and the Future of the Tort Law."
I moderated a panel discussion that included three of the major players in the national tobacco settlement - then national Big Tobacco lobbyist and former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour of Yazoo City, then-Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore and then-lead tobacco litigation negotiator "Dickie" Scruggs.
From my notes 11 years ago, a few random observations on the night's seminar discussion:
* Neither Moore nor Scruggs was at all forthcoming at the seminar when asked the total of the legal fees Scruggs would be receiving, how Moore determined the fee structure that would govern Scruggs' fees and expense reimbursements and how much the other 12 law firms involved in Mississippi's tobacco suit would get. . . .
Fordice died. Barbour's now governor. Moore's defending Scruggs' son, Zach, on the same charges to which his father pleaded guilty - and the same questions linger today that lingered in 1997 at the Ole Miss Law School about Mississippi's tobacco litigation, the legal fees and the political relationships and entanglements that perhaps forever changed Mississippi's legal landscape.
Jump to full article » |