Just when I thought it was safe to start a post about Pakistan, breaketh compelling Scruggsiana news.
The Sun-Herald is running an AP report that Dickie and Zach Scruggs have been ordered to do something fraught with danger for both themselves and (I wouldn’t doubt) the clients of Scruggs Katrina Group and lawd-knows-who-else:
JACKSON, Miss. — Prominent attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs is accustomed to asking tough questions during high-stakes lawsuits. This time, it appears he’ll have to answer a few questions himself.
A federal judge has ruled that Scruggs and his son and law partner, Zach, can be questioned under oath about their handling of leaked documents in a Hurricane Katrina insurance case. The order is unusual because Scruggs is an attorney in the case, and his deposition testimony could be used by the opposing side.
“Although rarely allowed, depositions of a party’s counsel are not altogether prohibited,” U.S. Magistrate Robert H. Walker wrote Wednesday. “Where the attorney has non-privileged, relevant information unavailable by other means, such depositions have been allowed.” …
This ruling came, according to the story, in McIntosh v. State Farm, a Mississippi case factually closely-related to Renfroe v. RigsbyU.S.A. v. Scruggs, the Alabama case in which Dickie faces criminal contempt-of-court charges. (To review: the Rigsby sisters took from their employer, State Farm’s claims-adjusting sub-contractor E.A. Renfroe, and gave to Dickie Scruggs documents which Scruggs Katrina Group and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood then used to force State Farm to settle with SKG clients; when Dickie handed the documents to Hood, rather than return them to Renfroe as ordered by an Alabama federal judge, the judge socked him with the charge of contempt.)
So now Dickie and Zach must answer under oath (or, more likely, assert their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination) no-telling-what questions about no-telling-which issues, and if ever there were a time they don’t want to do this, it would be now.
Discuss.
lotus
P.S. I’ve just noticed today’s Rossmiller post, a must-read/must-think-carefully-about closely related to what I’ve just shared. Read it and then we can discuss more. (Maybe he’ll crank up PACER and get this order linked for us before long too.)
P.S.2. Would this be what called Air Langston to Jackson on Wednesday? Mighty fast production of the order, if so, wasn’t it?
