Jump to full article: Y'all Politics (blog), 2008-12-24
Author: Alan Lange As featured in Profiles Mississippi on newstands now!
Intro: Lawyers and their clients, seemingly regardless of the merits of their legal claims, got rich in the bargain. It was a self-sustaining system – widely bragged about by plaintiff lawyers and lamented by defense teams.
The mastermind of that system was Richard “Dickie” Scruggs. The now disgraced and jailed tort baron was a political force moving elected political pawns on the chessboard around like a Grand Master. . . .
Scruggs is most widely known for reportedly taking home almost $800 million in the $250 billion landmark tobacco settlement. This was his reported take from Mississippi’s settlement alone. The political and PR strategies that he employed and the issues that arose in the wake of the tobacco settlement were virtually mirrored in the State Farm litigation. He was working his proven blueprint.
His greed and this post-Katrina debacle proved to be his downfall.
First, let’s look at the tobacco case.
Dickie Scruggs had made several million dollars prosecuting asbestos cases on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, just as others had done around the country. In the mid-1980’s, Scruggs’ longtime friend and political beneficiary Mike Moore was the Attorney General for the state of Mississippi. Moore’s longtime friend, attorney Mike Lewis of Clarksdale, comes up with the idea to sue the tobacco companies on behalf of the State to recoup the medical costs incurred by the state for caring for those with tobacco related illnesses. Moore contacts the now-well-funded, Pascagoula-based Scruggs about the litigation and the lawsuit begins.
There were really three parts to this plan. . . .
One other thing was left in the tobacco settlement’s wake . . . unhappy lawyers. Though many Mississippi attorneys in Scruggs’ tobacco consortium became multi-millionaires, others in that consortium believed they were “shut out” and not paid fees that they were due. One of those, Alwyn Luckey, sued Scruggs in one of the most contentious lawsuits that those involved in the case report they had ever seen.
This case eventually landed in the courtroom of Judge Bobby DeLaughter and became central to the scheme that brought the downfall of Scrugss and his cohorts.
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