* boasting of their success in manipulating major media outlets to inflict bad publicity on the targets of Scruggs’s suits;

* plotting ways of striking back against critics — in particular, Rossmiller — with tactics including going after him with legal process, as well as creating fake commenters and whole blogs to sow doubt about his reporting;

* wondering who they might pay to secure “Whistleblower of the Year” awards, or something similar, for their clients;

* apparently oblivious, just days before the fact, as to how the ceiling was going to cave in on them because of Judge Henry Lackey’s willingness to go to law enforcement to report a bribe attempt from the Scruggs camp.

The whole set of documents, along with Rossmiller’s summary and reaction, really must be seen to be believed. It will easily provide hours of eye-opening reading, both for those who followed the Scruggs affair in particular, and for everyone interested in how ambitious lawyers manipulate press coverage to their advantage — and how they can seek to use the law against their blogger critics. (& welcome readers from Forbes.com and Victoria Pynchon’s “On the Docket” column there).

Get that anti-Scruggs blogger! Get him! is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“A so-called ‘law enforcement official’” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Judge Bluth claims she is just following New York precedent. In A.M. Medical Services v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., 12 Misc.3d 143 (2006), the passenger and driver “admitted under oath that they faked the accident and withdrew their claims with prejudice.” but summary judgment was still not granted against the
medical provider who maintained its suit. (Daniel Wise, “N.Y. Judge: Summary Judgment Barred in Fake Auto Accident Case”, NYLJ/law.com, Jun. 6).

New York court: proof of insurance fraud doesn’t entitle insurance companies to summary judgment is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

* In major blow to defense, Judge Biggers denies motions to suppress wiretap evidence and evidence of similar bad acts [Rossmiller]

* Balducci says he and Patterson got $500K from Scruggs to influence AG Hood to drop indictment of State Farm, motive being to advance civil settlement [Folo]

* WSJ gets into the act with some highlights of wiretap transcripts [edit page; earlier here]

* Sen. Trent Lott says he’s a witness, not a target, of federal investigation [Anita Lee, Biloxi Sun-Herald]

* Scruggs off the hook on Alabama criminal contempt charge [WSJ law blog, Rossmiller, Folo]

* “Mr. Blake has served for many years as a conduit and a layer of separation, if you will, between Mr. Scruggs and other people on sensitive issues.” (Balducci transcript highlights, Folo; more)

* In effort to get Zack Scruggs indictment dismissed, his lawyers dwell on switch from “y’all” to “you” as implying shift in persons addressed from plural to singular [Folo first, second; Rossmiller first, second; on a "sweet potatoes" point, NMC @ Folo and sequel; also]

* DeLaughter/Peters branch of scandal reaches deep into Jackson legal community [Adam Lynch, Jackson Free Press]

* Article in new American Lawyer notes that Scruggs’s ambitious suits have lately hit a big losing streak, notably those against HMOs, nonprofit hospitals and Lehman Brothers [Susan Beck]. And Lotus catches an interestingly lawyerly wording on John Keker’s part [Folo]

* I’m quoted and this site is discussed in an article on blog coverage of the case; my lack of clarity as an interviewee probably accounts for Scruggs being said to have addressed audiences at the Manhattan Institute “a few” times, when if memory serves the correct reference is “twice”. [Patsy Brumfield, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo) @ Folo]

* For more background see our Scandals page; also YallPolitics.

Scruggs scandal update: sweet potatoes by the acre is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Scruggs’s deposition is to begin immediately and shall continue until its natural conclusion” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

* Remember when Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood declared his political patron Scruggs a “confidential informant”, thus throwing a most useful cloak of protection over him in his battle against contempt charges? It happens that Scruggs was at almost exactly the same moment donating large sums to the Democratic Attorneys General Association which seem to have passed through like a dose of salts to emerge at the other end as donations to Hood (YallPolitics; earlier on DAGA)

* Attorney Ed Peters, tagged with a pivotal role in Langston-DeLaughter branch of scandal, was formerly high-profile local D.A.; his prosecutorial vendetta against an attorney named J. Keith Shelton comes in for scrutiny in a new series by Folo proprietor Lotus [#5 in series; posts tagged Peters; see also YallPolitics]

* Folo co-blogger NMC, looking into Luckey and Wilson fee disputes (earlier here, here, here), is rattled by the prevalence of hearings-without-notice, ex parte judicial contacts, and other Gothic proceduralisms [Folo];

* Implications or non-implications for civil proceedings of Scruggs’s taking the Fifth [White Collar Crime Prof Blog]

* Adam Cohen of the NYT and Scott Horton of Harper’s claim defendants in precursor Minor-Teel-Whitfield scandal were railroaded on vague charges over not-really-illegal stuff; read pp. 6-9 of the indictment and see whether you agree (YallPolitics);

* For Mississippi, it’s already the most far-reaching corruption scandal in a century, aside from the question of how much bigger it might get [Jackson Clarion-Ledger]

Earlier Scruggs coverage on our scandals page.

Scruggs scandal developments, February 5 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Following public outrage, Spanish businessman drops plans to sue parents of boy he killed in road crash [UK Independent; earlier]
• Scruggs to take Fifth in State Farm case against Hood [Clarion-Ledger] And how much “home cooking” was the Mississippi titan dished out in the Medicaid-tobacco case that made his fortune? [Folo]
• More critics assail ABC “Eli Stone” vaccine-autism fiction, with American Academy of Pediatrics calling for episode’s cancellation [AAP press release; Stier, NY Post; earlier]
• Special ethics counsel recommends disbarment of Edward Fagan, lawyer of Swiss-bank-suit fame whose ethical missteps have been chronicled on this site over the years [Star-Ledger]. As recently as fourteen months ago the L.A. Times was still according Fagan good publicity;
• In past bail-bond scandals, private bond agencies have been caught colluding “with lawyers, the police, jail officials and even judges to make sure that bail is high and that attractive clients are funneled to them.” [Liptak, NYT]
• Archbishop of Canterbury calls for new laws to punish “thoughtless or cruel” comments on religion [Times Online, Volokh]
• Another disturbing case from Massachusetts of a citizen getting charged with privacy violation for recording police activity [also Volokh]
• Abuse of open-records law? Convicted arsonist files numerous requests for pictures and personal information of public employees who sent him to prison; they charge intimidation [AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
• It resembles a news program on Connecticut public-access cable, but look more closely: it’s law firm marketing [Ambrogi]
• Judge says Alfred Rava’s suit can proceed charging sex bias over Oakland A’s stadium distribution of Mother’s Day hats [Metropolitan News-Enterprise; earlier on Angels in Anaheim]
• Crack down on docs with multiple med-mal payouts? Well, there go lots of your neurosurgeons [three years ago on Overlawyered]

February 1 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

As emerges fairly clearly in the piece, the Scruggs camp is encouraging a line of defense that portrays Balducci, who has worked extensively with Scruggs in the past and has represented him in earlier lawsuits charging unfair fee division, as a clueless wannabe who pursued the bribe scheme on his own in hopes of impressing the senior lawyer — “a young man wanting to endear himself to Dickie Scruggs”, as one Scruggs intimate is quoted as saying. Famed novelist and Scruggs buddy John Grisham is quoted in the article (and in a separate WSJ blog interview) as saying that the scheme “doesn’t sound like the Dickie Scruggs that I know,” Mr. Grisham said yesterday. “When you know Dickie, and how successful he has been, you could not believe he would be involved in such a boneheaded bribery scam that is not in the least bit sophisticated.” But this is to assume that the payments starkly presented by the indictment as cash-for-the-judge were not intended to be dressed up in some more sophisticated guise, such as eventually forgiven loans routed through some fellow lawyer’s office, made to a relative of the judge, or both. That was the way things were handled in the Paul Minor cash-for-judges affair, in which Scruggs himself was involved, and one should not assume that no such overlay of sophistication would not have been poured over the Lackey payments.

Unrelatedly, novelist Grisham has this to say about the man who indicted Scruggs:

I was in law school with Jim Greenlee (the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, the prosecutor who brought the case against Mr. Scruggs.) He’s a man of integrity and a good prosecutor and he’s not going to reveal everything. Jim and I started and finished law school together and practiced in the same small town (Southaven, MS).

He’s a good, steady prosecutor, but I also anticipate a very vigorous defense.

Sunday’s Biloxi Sun-Herald has some interesting reporting about the fee-splitting dispute between attorney John Griffin Jones and Scruggs that landed in Judge Lackey’s court:

In January, Jones e-mailed Scruggs and SKG partner Sidney A. Backstrom, according to copies State Farm has filed in a lawsuit to stop Hood’s investigation.

In the first e-mail, Jones said his firm had lost $2 million in revenue alone on the insurance litigation until his firm was “excommunicated” from SKG in December 2006. “And what member of the joint venture committed to the work on the chance he would simply be made whole?” Jones said. “Certainly none I know of.”

Backstrom fired back: “… the whistle-blowers came to Dick and they were the sole basis for Hood’s interest which really was 80 percent of why SF wanted to settle; Trent Lott and Gene Taylor signed up with our office, as did (U.S.) Judge (Louis) Guirola – that mattered big time to SF too… ”

In the next e-mail Jones thanked Backstrom for his candor and said he didn’t want any of the SKG partners to be shortchanged. Jones closed with this prediction: “I want to avoid this as bad as I need to be paid for committing 2½ years of my law practice to what Dick has asked of me, but if that is where it is headed this is going to be awful for all of us.”

In March, Jones sued.

To put it differently, Backstrom was pointing out to Jones that SKG’s assemblage of political connections and clout, as distinct from its strictly legal skills, accounted for much of its payday. Sun-Herald reporter Lee also provides a brief reprise of the Minor prosecution:

Dickie Scruggs’ name surfaced repeatedly during judicial bribery trials that targeted a former associate, millionaire attorney Paul Minor of Biloxi. Today Minor sits in prison.

Both men helped finance judicial campaigns and failed to report repayment of loans for candidates. But prosecutors presented evidence Minor prevailed in cases before two of those state court judges from the Coast.

Scruggs testified against Minor at trial, declining immunity from prosecution because he said he had done nothing wrong. Minor said he did nothing wrong, either, except failing to have Trent Lott for a brother-in-law.

(Anita Lee, “Lawyer’s Prediction, Scruggs case: ‘This is going to be awful for all’”, Dec. 2; Y’allPolitics, Dec. 3). And Y’allPolitics recalls more about Scruggs’s successful dodging of prosecution in the Minor affair (Dec. 2), citing this Overlawyered “bag-o’-cash” account of Aug. 7, 2005.

David Rossmiller has a new post up catching some different details in these stories. Also check out Peter Henning at White Collar Crime Prof Blog on the “honest-services” predicate by which courts have given federal prosecutors fairly wide latitude to go after local and state corruption (Nov. 30)(& Jane Genova).

Scruggs indictment IV is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Rossmiller also analyzes the underlying Jones v. Scruggs dispute over legal fees, in which the Jones firm, formerly one of the five participants in the Scruggs Katrina Group (SKG), alleges that it was “frozen out” and ejected by the remaining four firms, allotted only token fees after shouldering the substantial work of case briefing. Why would it have been advantageous to the Scruggs firm to have Judge Lackey shunt this dispute into arbitration? One key reason is that proceeding with a court battle, even if successful, might have risked exposing to the public many of the internal workings of SKG and perhaps also of Scruggs’s own firm. (Having read the Jones complaint, I would note that Jones was alleging that Scruggs had made a common practice of squeezing collaborating lawyers out of their fee shares in earlier, unrelated litigation during his career. The evidence put forth to support such an allegation, apart from whether it turned out to support a claim for punitive damages, might result in public airing of all sorts of messy and embarrassing episodes from the past.)

John Jones and Steve Funderberg, the lawyers whose firm sued Scruggs et al in the underlying Jones v. Scruggs suit, have given an interview to the Mississippi press; Jones says he knows Scruggs well and has represented him in court, but that the relationship changed drastically “when the money hit the table”; of go-between Balducci, Funderberg said, “Knowing Tim Balducci as I do, I am utterly flabbergasted that he would ever be a part of something like that or believe he could ever get away with something like that”. (Jon Kalahar, “Former Scruggs Colleague Says Money Changed Him”, WTOK, Nov. 30).

At Y’AllPolitics, Alan Lange traces many of the recurring connections between the dramatis personae and notes that the “whole crowd” was deeply involved in the much-criticized MCI contingency-fee back taxes negotiation, which we posted on at the time at Point of Law. “Attorney General Jim Hood allowed his largest campaign contributor, Joey Langston, to be the plaintiff lawyer and also appointed Tim Balducci as a Special Assistant Attorney General in that case”. Langston, for whom Balducci used to work, is now among lawyers representing Scruggs.

Some noteworthy reactions to the indictments: “This is maybe the worst day of my life,” says longtime Scruggs friend Don Barrett, quoted in an Associated Press piece that also rounds up some of the high points of Scruggs’ career (Michael Kunzelman, “Scruggs’ career in jeopardy”, AP/Hattiesburg American, Dec. 1). “I’m disappointed in him,” Katrina client Lyman Cumbest of Pascagoula, who’s suing State Farm, said of Scruggs. “With all the money he had, he didn’t have to bribe a judge. He’s got more money than he could ever spend.” (“FBI probe in judicial bribe case to continue”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Nov. 30). Byron Steir at Mass Tort Litigation Blog comments (Nov. 30):

If true, all of these allegations suggest remarkable hubris in at least some of the top plaintiffs’ lawyers. One wonders about the effect of a lifestyle of private jets and multiple wins of multiple millions (or tens of millions) in fees. One also wonders about the effect of high-risk, winner-take-all, contingency fee litigation. Brash and aggressive personalities seem to thrive in such an environment — but they too must keep in mind that lawyers ultimately serve the client (not the other way around) and that no one (especially not the lawyer) is above the law.

And more: “It just boggles the mind,” said Biloxi trial lawyer Jack Denton. “Here is a man who has had an enormous amount of success, who reached a level very few attorneys, if any, have reached. Why would he risk everything over a legal dispute over attorneys’ fees?” David Rossmiller, quoted in the same story, has one possible reply, which is that people may begin reevaluating “how this amazingly successful man got to be so amazingly successful.” (Richard Fausset and Jenny Jarvie, “Katrina lawyer at the eye of a storm”, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30)(& welcome Tom Kirkendall readers).

Scruggs indictment, days 3-4 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft writes that Judge Lackey “presumably [agreed] to tape his calls with the defendants. I suspect the F.B.I. also got a wiretap on Scruggs’ or his co-defendants’ phones, since there are several calls described in the Indictment that don’t involve Judge Lackey. Getting a wiretap on a law firm’s telephone is unusual — particularly due to the substantial and cumbersome minimization efforts required to ensure that calls of clients and lawyers unrelated to the criminal investigation are not overheard.” At the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, columnist Sid Salter has more on co-defendants Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson. A PDF of the indictment is here.

The internal cohesion of the anti-insurer lawyer consortium known as the Scruggs Katrina Group (SKG) appears at present to be under extreme pressure. Rossmiller reports that “policyholder lawyers in general tell me they are seething over Scruggs” and in particular that at least some lawyers who have been his allies “don’t want their names and their cases tarnished with the Scruggs name”. On Thursday an extraordinary contretemps developed in which SKG co-founder Don Barrett of Lexington, Miss. sent a letter (PDF) to a judge hearing Katrina cases against State Farm, suggesting that SKG was being re-formed without Scruggs and would take over the litigation with he, Barrett, as lead counsel (Lattman, WSJ). Within hours, Scruggs had dispatched a letter of his own (PDF) saying that Barrett was misinformed, that it was up to plaintiff families to decide who they wanted to represent them, and that many would undoubtedly wish to retain Scruggs (second posts at Lattman and Rossmiller). As of Thursday evening, the Scruggs Katrina Group website has prominently posted the Scruggs letter but not the Barrett one; one might speculate that if some sort of split within SKG is imminent, the website operation, at least, may have maintained loyalty to the Scruggs side.

On the statewide political repercussions, see Majority in Mississippi, Sid Salter at the Clarion-Ledger, and Chris Lawrence at Signifying Nothing, who also quotes Salter in a comment thread predicting: “The next sob story will be that Dickie’s indictment is about Bush administration persecution of trial lawyers and a rehash of Paul Minor’s problems.” Take it away, Adam Cohen and Scott Horton!

On political repercussions nationally, it didn’t take long for the Hillary Clinton campaign to cancel the Scruggs-hosted fundraiser that was to have been headlined by husband Bill Clinton next month (Associated Press, WSJ Washington Wire). The North Dakota political blog Say Anything thinks politicos in that state should return the (rather substantial) sums they have received from Scruggs and colleagues, but one may reasonably assume that such calls will be ignored, just as elected officials have been in no hurry to divest themselves of the booty collected from such figures as felon/mega-donor William Lerach.

Where are Scruggs’s admirers and defenders? One can only suppose that somber music is playing in the corridors at the business section of the New York Times, which has run one moistly admiring profile of the Mississippi attorney after another in the past couple of years. As of 3 p.m. Thursday, the Times’s very restrained story on the indictment was in a suitably inconspicuous position on the paper’s online business page — the 15th highest story in the left column, in fact. The story, by serial Scruggs profiler Joseph B. Treaster, quotes the relatively ambiguous line attributed to defendant Timothy Balducci — “All is done, all is handled and all went well.” — but omits the far more smoking-gunnish “We paid for this ruling; let’s be sure it says what we want it to say.” And things are anything but upbeat at Mother Jones, where Stephanie Mencimer concedes that she finds the indictment “pretty damning“.

More links: Paul Kiel, TPM Muckraker (indictment “devastating… it doesn’t look good for Scruggs”); Legal Schnauzer (defender of Paul Minor distinguishes the two cases); WSJ interview with Judge Lackey (sub-only) and editorial (free link), Rossmiller Friday morning post (certain details in indictment suggest that a conspiracy insider, possibly Balducci, may have cooperated with prosecutors)(& welcome Instapundit, Point of Law, TortsProf, Adler @ Volokh, Open Market, Y’allPolitics, Majority in Mississippi, Rossmiller readers).

Scruggs indictment, day two is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system