shaveswithaoccamsrazor has just brought us a Frontline interview with Dickie Scruggs about the tobacco litigation that bears full reading before ending here:
Q. There were risks involved here that weren’t normal to a regular law suit. This wasn’t just a risk to the overhead of your law office by putting too much money into a case. What were the risks to you back then?
Scruggs: There was a risk of, I think, public humiliation was the worst one. If you are unsuccessful after taking on a task like this. Financial ruin. Discreditation, professionally. The wear and tear it puts on your family to read unfavorable things in the newspaper every day when you are not used to–not only not used to publicity, you are not used to national adverse publicity. Those sorts of things.
What was the date of this interview?
I can’t find one yet, jim, but Frontline’s list of interviewees for the series is certainly interesting. Just real interesting . . .
May 12, 1998. Under story archives. Year 1998.
What’s more fascinating is that G. Robert Blakey, the guy that wrote the RICO statute figures so prominently in the interviews.
Isn’t this the same RICO statute that Scruggs et al, are worried about?
Don’t know where to put this but here is a CL link that bears viewing. I guess it takes all kinds.
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/OPINION02/803210321/-1/getpublished05
Just have to play the devil’s advocate, but was not Attorney Hood trying to get State Farm under the RICO Act before his hearing in Natchez in Feb.?