folo

UPDATED BELOW (X 2)

Mercy, there’s lotsa Scruggs-indictment kudzu a-growin’, so let’s wade on in. For orientation, it’s hard to beat bmaz’s comment yesterday at The Next Hurrah:

… [T]he indictment does not look good. No question, there is some bad stuff going on down there in the Gulf. What a rancid mess. Something doesn’t sit right to me though. I want to know a LOT more about Balducci, Backstrom, Judge Lackey and the relative interaction of all three with Federal and state investigators and prosecutors, as well as insurance companies (especially State Farm). There is a lot of referencing to Scruggs, but darned if most all of the overt acts alleged seem to only involve the people that have flipped. I wonder if they maybe didn’t turn a little earlier than they are letting on and they aren’t setting Scruggs up. I don’t know diddly about life and law in Mississippi and Alabama; but from where I come from, this whole scenario would be way [too] cheesey to have been the product of someone as accomplished as Scruggs. These are the big leagues, and you got to get your uniform a little dirty if you are going to play; this, however, just looks too stupid and sloppy to be Scruggs’ plan. I am not saying Scruggs is innocent or that he is clean and angelic, he most certainly is not; but the scene we are seeing is not what it currently appears to be irrespective of what culpability there is on the part of Scruggs. … I want to know the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say.

Among “people who flipped,” I think we’d better count Tim Balducci, apparently the only one of the five indictees who hasn’t yet been arraigned. Jackson Clarion-Ledger columnist Sid Salter highlights parts of his and co-defendant Steve Patterson’s website bios, but the WSJ’s Peter Lattman has an especially-interesting bit (and Balducci photo): Sure, ol’ Tim served hot cornpone to Judge Lackey up in Calhoun County — but his home page quotes William Faulkner ( "In my time I have seen truth that was anything under the sun but just, and I have seen justice using tools and instruments I wouldn’t want to touch with a ten-foot fence rail "); in fact, his site features a whole Faulkner section. So the boy may be mortified by not just the content but the form of his “bodies buried” speech immortalized on F.B.I. tape.

Now as to “relative interactions,” the little we know of them yet is sorghum-molasses dark and sticky — the stickiest being of course the (ongoing) Katrina litigation beneath this fee-dispute that landed in Judge Lackey’s court. Here’s Overlawyered on how that’s looking now:

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 (Lattman second post). 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.

By the way, Overlawyered is right: Rossmiller (that’d be David, at would-you-believe Insurance Coverage Blog) is a must-read source on things Scruggsian (and almost as funny as Mary on Obama on Mukasey):

… Economists will no doubt point out that because Judge Lackey reported the alleged conspiracy to the FBI right away and cooperated with what became a sting operation, there was no true bribe market here, so we don’t know the real price. For example, did the FBI tell him to accept whatever money was offered? Or was he rehearsed in haggling? Did the FBI employ economists to debate what number would be a plausible bribe for a Mississippi state court judge, so that Lackey did not tip off the sting by doing something suspicious like, say, accepting a bribe of $52, a box of imitation Rolexes and a Celine Dion CD? …

Heh. Oh, and before I forget: any “anti-insurer lawyer consortiums” we’re thinking of here must include Trent Lott. Writing at Slate in the interim between the F.B.I. raid and Dickie’s indictment, Timothy Noah discussed in fascinating detail “the Scandal Theory”: “that legal proceedings concerning Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and the flamboyant plaintiff’s attorney Richard ‘Dickie’ Scruggs, who is also Lott’s brother-in-law, are about to expose improper behavior by Lott.”

You see, after State Farm stiffed him on the loss of his own 154-year-old house, Trent Lott

declared war not only on State Farm (“Like many of you, I wondered how State Farm Insurance this week could report a surging $5.6 billion profit — up 65 percent from $3.2 billion in 2005 — when our state’s largest insurer has been inundated with an unprecedented volume of storm claims”) but on the entire insurance industry. He introduced legislation requiring homeowner insurers to clarify what their policies cover and what they don’t; he co-sponsored legislation to eliminate the antitrust exemption for insurance companies; he brought [Mississippi attorney general Jim] Hood up to Washington to testify before the Senate commerce committee, of which he is a member; and he entered internal State Farm e-mails concerning Katrina coverage into the Senate hearing record. According to Chuck Chamness, CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, Lott phoned him last year and threatened “bringing down State Farm and the industry.” It was, complained Wall Street Journal editorialist Kimberley Strassel, “a ferocious campaign of political revenge that would make even Henry Waxman envious.” Strassel even called it “extortion,” noting that State Farm had quickly settled with Hood and Scruggs, and paid off Lott. (The settlement has since come unglued.)

Strassel probably didn’t mean to be taken literally, but the question lingers: Did Lott’s uncharacteristically liberal Senate crusade, or any support he gave Scruggs or Hood, include actions that were potentially illegal?

And there you see the economic forces aligned against Dickie Scruggs, out to answer that question by fair means or foul. To gauge the political ones (oh yeah, the Clintons did cancel — AP, MoJo, WSJ), I went somewhere you may not choose to follow: to a Mississippi blog by a guy named Alan (do you want to visit a place whose sitemeter spikes whenever Michelle Malkin links?). Well, if you’d rather not click on Y’allPolitics.com, I can tell you that one thing Alan said yesterday was, “I am struggling with how to show all of the connections between Hood, [former state AG] Mike Moore and the indicted ones. This effectively ends Mike Moore’s shot at a Senate run.” A commenter named “Reagan Dem” put in:

Scruggs, himself, will be singing like a bird to save his own fanny and that of his son. Jim Hood and Mike Moore had better begin interviewing counsel for themselves, because Scruggs will point the finger right at them, corroborating the things that Balducci will no doubt tell the feds as well. …

Those sounds that you hear are the keyboards of computers belonging to Republican attorneys all over the Magnolia State, getting their CV’s updated, for Governor Barbour just might soon have himself an AG vacancy to appoint, as well as a US Senate appointment to make.

Bearing in mind Jeralyn Merritt’s point — 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

— now consider what else Reagan Dem said:

… Now ask yourself, do you think that the feds heard and have tapes of any conversations regarding the collusion between Scruggs and AG Jim Hood in regard to the shenanigans leading up to the criminal contempt charges before Federal Judge Acker’s court in Alabama? Given that it seems that Scruggs was being scrutinized since March of 2007, I’d suggest that there’s a very strong possibility that they did.

Also ask yourself about how plausible it is that during that same time, and with those same wire taps, they’ve taped conversations between Scruggs and Mike Moore as it pertains to Katrina lawsuit investigations by Hood’s office and Moore’s involvement?

Further, ask yourself how plausible it is that there would be wire taps of Timothy Balducci during the last 8 months? Now, given that Mr. Balducci received half of the MCI settlement millions from Joey Langston and that both of these guys were running thousands of dollars through the Democrat Attorney Generals Association for AG Jim Hood at the time, and that the MCI settlement circumstances were one of the largest AG campaign issues, might one suppose that the Feds heard some things that might be a little shady, if not illegal, regarding Mr Hood, Mr. Langston, and Mr. Balducci?

Finally, given that they have a pretty tight case in the current indictment, don’t you think that Mr. Balducci, and Mr. Scruggs and the other Mr. Scruggs will be cutting a deal pretty soon?

And who do you think they will be cutting the deal against…do you think they’ll be pointing the finger at their respective paralegals, or their secretaries?? The Federal boys won’t consider those approriate trades, now will they?

Jim Hood and Mike Moore had better hire some lawyers of their own because the Feds are coming.

The same may apply to Trent Lott. Well, MUCH more to come, but for now I suggest we ponder the first half of bmaz’s comment quoted above:

… I have a soft spot for lawyers that have the cojones to take on the biggest of business and the most powerful in government. It is a thankless job that is literally life consuming; and while you are in the middle of it, power comes at you from every angle and corner making it you and your co-plaintiffs against most of the perceived world. The upside is very difficult to reach, but immense; the downside is almost bottomless. I don’t know Dickie Scruggs particularly (as mentioned previously, I talked to him a couple of times and he could not have been nicer or more helpful), and certainly don’t know him as a person; but Scruggs is one of the few out there that fight the mammoth battles, and for that, I respect him. Scruggs has become very wealthy in the process, but don’t be fooled, whatever he may be, or not be, as a person, he has accomplished some tremendous things in the litigation of issues on asbestos, tobacco, auto and tire safety, and other areas of product liability. He is now fighting giant insurance companies for their unconscionable treatment of claims in the Gulf from Katrina, and boy do they deserve it. So, since this story may be around for a while, take what I say with a grain of salt; I don’t start out with a completely neutral perspective. …

Fair enough, bmaz. Nor does any other force at work in this case.

lotus

UPDATE: Judge Lackey has given the Wall Street Journal an interview. Their law blog has a summary and link, and later today, I’ll try to get hold of the original story.

UPDATE II: David Rossmiller’s latest also features the Lackey interview. (What an unfortunate name for a judge, no?)