Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Dickie Scruggs’

Scruggs indictment VIII

A report in today’s New York Times advances the ball on a number of fronts:

  • Per an unidentified official, “federal prosecutors have asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to examine whether Mr. Scruggs has engaged in multiple bribery attempts of local judges.” DoJ is said to have sent lawyers to Mississippi to check out leads along these lines, and is also said to be interested in possible misconduct by Scruggs in the Alwyn Luckey fee dispute.

  • The Times interviews Clarksdale, Miss. attorney Charles M. Merkel Jr., who spent more than a decade in court fighting Scruggs in the Luckey dispute:

    “It’s scorched earth with Dickie Scruggs,” says Mr. Merkel, sitting in a wood-paneled office featuring duck-hunting memorabilia and two framed checks representing about $17 million in payments that Mr. Scruggs had to disgorge to Mr. Merkel’s client — a lawyer named Alwyn Luckey who argued that Mr. Scruggs shortchanged him for work he performed on asbestos cases that made Mr. Scruggs rich.

    Mr. Merkel and prosecutors say that the Luckey case foreshadowed some of Mr. Scruggs’ woes in the current bribery case. “As far as whether he’s guilty, I can’t say,” Mr. Merkel concedes. “But I’m not surprised, because he’s willing to use any means to an end. And it irks the hell out of me when Scruggs skates on the edge and makes the profession look bad.”

  • Keker, as predicted, is labeling Timothy Balducci a “wannabe” and says, of him and Scruggs: “I don’t think they’re close at all.” Merkel, for one, isn’t buying that: “He’s a lot closer to Scruggs than Scruggs would like to portray now,” Mr. Merkel says. “Balducci made part of the closing arguments in one of my cases, and they sat at the same table. When I was negotiating with them, it was generally with Balducci.”

  • The Times also picks up on Scruggs’s liberal dispensing of resources to sway Mississippi political influence-holders during the tobacco caper:

    In his deposition with Mr. Merkel in 2004, he discussed some $10 million in payments he made to P. L. Blake, a onetime college football star in Mississippi. After running into financial troubles, Mr. Blake became a political consultant for Mr. Scruggs, helping his boss navigate the back rooms of state politics and tobacco litigation.

    In the deposition, where he was represented by Mr. Balducci, Mr. Scruggs praised Mr. Blake for keeping “his ear to the ground politically in this state and in the South generally, and he has been extremely helpful in keeping me apprised of that type activity.” Mr. Blake could not be reached for comment.

    When Mr. Merkel further pressed Mr. Scruggs about Mr. Blake’s services, Mr. Scruggs elaborated: “He has numerous connections — in terms — when I say connections, I don’t mean that in a sinister way, I mean he just has a lot — he knows an awful lot of people in the political realm. And he — depending on the stage of tobacco litigation proceedings was keeping his ear to the ground, prying, checking. I mean, I never asked who or what or all that.”

$10 million in walking-around money — and Scruggs “never asked who or what or all that”? (Update: in a sensational new post, David Rossmiller points to a document — page 514 of the Luckey trial transcript, PDF — in which the overall money paid to or through Blake (most of it in the form of future payouts) is pegged at around $50 million. The “well over $500,000” figure told to reporter Michael Orey seems to have signified well, well over, indeed.)

David Rossmiller takes note of a letter by Balducci dated August 1 over a regulatory matter which in its cocksure and sarcastic tone suggests that Balducci had not yet been confronted and “flipped” by federal investigators as of that date. This morning he adds a document and link roundup.

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger quotes Jackson attorney Dennis Sweet, who partnered with Scruggs on slavery reparations, as saying he “had a hard time believing that Dickie would involve his son in anything like this,” a comment that perhaps is open to close reading.

At Y’AllPolitics, two commenters discuss how conspiracy investigations logically develop over their life cycle. David Sanders notes that when the timing is up to them, federal investigators prefer not to uncover operations and reveal informants until they are satisfied they’ve caught all the targets in their net, which raises the question of whether they had developed what they considered to be the best evidence they were going to get, or whether some development forced their hand into closing the net before that point. “LawDoctor1960” observes that the indictees will soon get a look at the prosecution’s case, which if damning could induce one or more to join Balducci in “flipping” with resulting further revelations and perhaps further indictments.

The WSJ law blog has some answers to the question put the other day: Where is Mr. Keker?

Folo wonders: does the Scruggs firm (as opposed to Scruggs Katrina) really not have a website, and if so, isn’t that exceedingly strange? Don’t they want to encourage potential clients to approach them?

Finally, for those who are wondering whether there’s any pro-Scruggs blogging to be found, we can report that we’ve spotted a reasonable facsimile at Cotton Mouth and at Pensacola Beach Blog.

Earlier coverage: here, here, here, etc.

Breaking Monday afternoon: FBI agents search offices of another leading Mississippi plaintiff’s attorney, Joey Langston, who has been representing Scruggs in his indictment, and has had many other past dealings with him.

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Scruggs indictment VII

With the criminal case itself not furnishing many new developments over the past day or two, attention is turning to the question of what the “buried bodies” might be of which Tim Balducci claimed knowledge (and which prosecutors might wish him to sing about), and also to the possibly overlapping topic of Scruggs’s earlier run-ins with lawyers and other professionals over the splitting of fees. (Balducci represented Scruggs in some fee disputes, as did the Jones firm that later sued him over fees.) Also drawing much attention is the question of whether an intensified ethical searchlight will make life hot for the Mississippi political figures who’ve participated most extensively in Scruggs’s litigation campaigns over the years, namely former Attorney General Mike Moore and present AG Jim Hood.

The U.S. Chamber-backed stable of publications that includes Legal NewsLine has been digging into these topics. At the SE Texas Record, Steve Korris relates details of Scruggs’s lengthy and bitter dispute over asbestos fees with attorneys William Roberts Wilson Jr. and Alwyn Luckey, in which Scruggs was represented by John Griffin Jones. Jones’s associate Steve Funderburg in March of this year confronted Scruggs in dramatic fashion in an email over his sense of having been done out of Katrina fees:

“I have looked in the mirror all weekend and tried to figure out how I could be so stupid,” he wrote. “John and I DEFENDED you in fee dispute litigation for God’s sake.”

He wrote, “We DEFENDED you when people said you were greedy, or were a back stabber, or a liar, or anything else.”

He wrote, “You have developed a good routine. It worked. But go to your grave knowing that you have shaken my belief in everything I hold dear.”

He wrote, “I did not believe that people like you really existed. I am ashamed and will always be ashamed of having defended you and protected you.”

See also Y’All Politics for discussion.

Read On…

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Scruggs indictment VI

Plenty of news today, and some links to commentary:

As part of Timothy Balducci’s guilty plea, the feds confirm that Balducci has been “substantially” assisting them in their case against the other defendants. Per the sub-only WSJ: “People familiar with the case said the government has recordings of Mr. Scruggs that include evidence beyond that alluded to in the indictment.” Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker observes that the feds might have interviewed Balducci on any number of other matters, such as where “there are bodies buried,” in his own memorable phrase.

A Jan. 22 trial date has been set in the case.

Where’s John Keker? wonders Folo: “[Billy] Quin was sure doing all the talking for Team Scruggs yesterday”.

David Rossmiller employs the verb “to Scruggs”, and numerous commentators read the lawyer’s withdrawal from representation of Katrina cases as a step he would not have taken had the new criminal charges not loomed very seriously indeed.

Y’All Politics keeps wondering where AG Jim Hood is. It also notices that former Mississippi AG Mike Moore, a figure well known to longterm readers of this site, seems to be involved with the doings of the now Scruggs-less Scruggs Katrina Group. Martin Grace finds irony in that lawyer consortium’s approach to its own issues of “emergency management”, as well as in its solicitation of whistleblowers.

X Curmudgeon notes Scruggs’s long history of skating close to the edge on use of confidential informants: “some lawyers would argue [that] his success has depended heavily on his willingness to break the rules, or to play outside the rules.” Regarding John Grisham’s statement that his friend Scruggs would not have gotten involved in a “boneheaded bribery scam that is not in the least bit sophisticated”.

Isn’t it great having friends like John Grisham? In other words, if it had been a SOPHISTICATED bribery scheme, then, yeah, sure, he could see Dickie doing that. But not a boneheaded scam.

White Collar Crime Prof speculates about the shape of a Scruggs defense based on the twin themes of “it’s too boneheaded for smart guys like us”, and hanging Balducci out to dry.

Not to mention hoping that the tape recordings aren’t too damning.

Update: A new post from David Rossmiller ties together several loose threads mentioned above relating to Katrina litigation, confidential informants, the Renfroe documents and AG Hood. Our earlier coverage, by the way, can be reached by links from here.

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Scruggs indictment V

Roger Parloff at Fortune Legal Pad is out with some informative analysis based on an interview with attorney John Griffin Jones, who filed the fee suit against Scruggs. Among the questions explored: how high were the stakes in that suit, and why might the defendants have been keen on an arbitration order? Relating to the latter point, Parloff writes:

Scruggs’s lead counsel, John Keker of Keker & Van Nest, adds that the notion that Scruggs might have wanted to keep the case out of public view by putting it into arbitration is “absurd as a motive” for a bribe, since the case “was certainly going into arbitration” and that was “the only place it could possibly be.”

Which raises the question: if an order for arbitration was a foregone conclusion, why are Scruggs chums floating the theory that attorney Timothy Balducci thought he could impress Scruggs by getting such an order from Judge Lackey?

The WSJ law blog reports that Balducci was arraigned Tuesday and has asked to withdraw his law license. On the location of his arraignment, see Mississippi blogger Folo (earlier). (Update: Whoops, actually Mississippi expatriate, see comments.) Balducci was named to represent himself, drawing many puzzled reactions. (Update: NE Mississippi Daily Journal has more on Balducci’s arraignment and likely cooperation, via Folo.) Also, the WSJ law blog interviews David Rossmiller (who himself has several new posts up) and reports that the Scruggs firm may be withdrawing from Scruggs Katrina Group cases after all. (Update: confirmed in this Sun-Herald story).

This Sunday profile of Judge Lackey in the Sun-Herald notes that he’s “a deacon at First Baptist Church and a member of a state commission charged with ensuring judicial integrity,” which as several commentators note might indicate that he was a risky one to approach with a proposal for corruption.

A commenter at David Rossmiller notes whose interests are served by the pre-emptive “character assassination of Balducci” in recent coverage and also writes:

Patterson resigned Oct. 18, 1996 after pleading guilty to filing false documents to avoid paying taxes on a Range Rover. And Grisham thinks these folks are super sophisticated, why?…

And how bad does the spin from last week look? The FBI did not find “the document” and Scruggs is not withdrawing from Katrina cases, and then a few days later he is withdrawing. By the way, the FBI removed computer data which is most likely being analyzed right now, so who the heck knows what they have found. Maybe “dead bodies”? …

Earlier coverage of the indictment here, here, here, and here.

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Scruggs indictment IV

The WSJ law blog’s Peter Lattman is now reporting from Scruggs hometown Oxford, Miss. and (with co-reporter Paolo Prada) is in today’s paper with “It’s Party Time For Dickie Scruggs In Oxford, Miss.” (WSJ, Dec. 4, sub-only). Among its newsy items: “People familiar with the investigation” confirm what was widely surmised, that attorney Timothy Balducci “began cooperating with prosecutors at some point after offering the judge money”. Balducci’s whereabouts are not immediately apparent and a “neighbor said no one had been [at his home] for a more than a week.” How much heat is attorney Balducci getting for his role in the case? The WSJ-on-paper quotes Deborah Patterson, wife of Balducci’s business partner and co-defendant Steven Patterson, as saying of Balducci: “He’s a short midget…and he has some sort of complex.” In the online version of the article this quote is shortened (so to speak) to “He has some sort of complex,” but with no correction or other explanation of whether the midget reference was repertorial error or what, exactly.

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.

Read On…

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Scruggs indictment, days 3-4

Speculation continues to mount that central bribery-scandal figure Timothy Balducci may be cooperating with prosecutors, and perhaps has been doing so for some time; Balducci had not yet been arraigned as of this weekend, and the indictment quotes extensively from conversations he held with other defendants, in addition to those that took place in Judge Lackey’s bugged chambers. (Peter Lattman and Ashby Jones, “In Scruggs Probe, Focus Turns to Another Lawyer”, WSJ, Dec. 1)(sub-only). In the latest of his extensive posts on the case, David Rossmiller adds to the picture: “From the verbatim quotes by Balducci given in the indictment, one logically can surmise that investigators had substantial recorded evidence that would have given them tremendous leverage over Balducci in obtaining his cooperation against the others.” In addition, certain elements in the indictment’s description of Balducci’s actions suggest that by mid-October, presumably flipped by investigators, he had begun taking steps that could be used to document targets’ knowing participation in the conspiracy (in particular, his return to Dickie Scruggs to finance a purported second-round bribe, and his statement in the presence of Zach Scruggs and Sidney Backstrom that “we paid for this ruling”).

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).

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Scruggs indictment, day two

David Rossmiller at Insurance Coverage Blog (who’s also a co-blogger of mine at Point of Law) continues to be the must-read source on this sensational story and its fast-breaking developments. He’s posted a PDF of Jones v. Scruggs, the lawsuit before Judge Lackey by lawyers who say they were cut out of Katrina fees. He also offers some answers to the question posed by a commenter at Above the Law, who asks, “What kind of cheap-o offers a $40,000 bribe to resolve a dispute over $26.5 million in attorneys fees?!” (To begin with, the ruling sought from Judge Lackey would not have disposed of the fee claim, just sent it to arbitration.) Martin Grace scents a ripe irony in the fee-dispute lawsuit, noting that it charged Scruggs with engaging in the same sorts of tactics toward fellow lawyers that he regularly accused insurers of practicing toward their insureds: “lowballing claims and producing fake documents in support of the claims.”

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).

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Scruggs indicted on bribery charge

“A federal grand jury today indicted one of the nation’s most successful trial lawyers, Richard F. Scruggs, on criminal charges that he and other lawyers engaged in a scheme to bribe a judge.” The 13-page indictment charges five lawyers, including Scruggs and his son and law partner Zach, with offering Mississippi state judge Henry Lackey $40,000 for favorable action in a lawsuit filed against the Scruggs firm over Katrina insurance fees. “The indictment says Judge Lackey, who sits in Mississippi’s Third Circuit Court District, reported the ‘bribery overture’ to federal authorities and agreed to assist investigators in an ‘undercover capacity.'” (AP/New York Times, Nov. 28; Biloxi Sun-Herald).

Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger is out front on the story, reporting: “Some of the conversations between Balducci and the judge were apparently taped,” and reporting alleged language uttered by some of the indicted lawyers, including: “We paid for this ruling; let’s be sure it says what we want it to say.” (“Scruggs arrested on bribery charges”, Nov. 28). David Rossmiller is following developments at Point of Law and at his blog, where he has a PDF of the indictment.

More: Y’all Politics has considerable reader comment about the implications for other Mississippi political figures, and notes drily that “for starters, Dickie Scruggs fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on December 15th featuring Bill Clinton, will likely be cancelled.” Many sites, including Michelle Malkin’s, RedState, and Tim Noah’s “Chatterbox” at Slate, are speculating on the close proximity of these developments to the surprise retirement of Scruggs’ brother-in-law, Sen. Trent Lott.

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November 20 roundup

  • Dickie Scruggs will host Dec. 15 Hillary fundraiser headlined by Bill [Clarion-Ledger via WSJ law blog]

  • Megabucks campaigns for state judicial office: Symptom? Illness? Both? [Justice O’Connor @ OpinionJournal.com, Adler @ Volokh; Pero]

  • U.K. kids’ author says publisher’s safety worries vetoed depiction of fire-breathing dragon in book [Daily Mail]

  • Roger Parloff describes the Judith Regan complaint as bizarre, and angry commenters are soon denouncing him as a Fox’s-paw [Fortune Legal Pad; Althouse; ritual disclaimer]

  • Wonder why booking a dance venue can get pricey? Here’s one reason [WV Record]

  • “Why should I take a dollar out of [my neighbor’s] pocket?”: a Virginia Tech family wrestles with the temptation to sue [Mundy, WashPostMag]

  • Essential silliness of the “media diversity” scare [Welch, LAT]

  • Boston’s James Sokolove, known for his heavy rotation of personal-injury TV ads, is now chasing for … patent plaintiffs? [WSJ law blog; earlier]

  • Great big gobs of mutilated monkey meat could bring five years in slammer for NYC immigrant [IHT]

  • Recounting the tale of Miami’s one-time high-living “King of Torts” Louis Robles, who stole from around 4,500 clients [AJP “CEO Alert” series, PDF]

  • Campaign regulation laws spell incumbent protection in New Zealand too [Bainbridge]

  • Influence of newspaper lobby retards natural migration to the web of fine-print legal notices [Liptak, NYT]

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November 13 roundup

  • Ethical questions for Vioxx lawyers [WSJ law blog] And who’s going to make what? [same; more from Ted at PoL]
  • American lawyers shouldn’t get all self-congratulatory about the courage shown by their Pakistani counterparts [Giacalone; more]
  • Just another of those harmless questionnaires from school, this time about kindergartners’ at-home computer use. Or maybe there’s more to it [Nicole Black]
  • Probe of personal injury “runners” bribing Gotham hospital staff to chase business nets another conviction, this one of a lawyer who stole $148,000 from clients [NYLJ; earlier]
  • Facebook sometimes sends text messages to obsolete cellphone numbers relinquished by its users, so let’s sue it [IndyStar]
  • Series on defensive medicine at docblog White Coat Rants [first, second, third]
  • Arm broken by bully, student wins $4 million verdict against Tampa private school; bully himself not sued [St. Petersburg Times]
  • Washington, D.C. reportedly doing away with right to contest a traffic parking ticket in person [The Newspaper, on “the politics of driving”]
  • “Walking headline factory” Scruggs to be arraigned November 20 [Rossmiller]
  • More on whether government’s refusal to alter paper currency discriminates against the blind [Waldeck, ConcurOp via Bader; earlier]
  • Eric Turkewitz hosts a truly marathon Blawg Review #134 [NY Pers Inj Law Blog]

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