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Recall that the magistrate in the McIntosh case has ordered the ex-Scruggs Law Firm to produce documents relating to the Rigsbys. The Scruggses have filed pleadings objecting to this order. The folks at Slabbed have linked to the objection.

The Scruggs objection, which you can read for yourself here, raises two main objections.  The documents subject to the subpoena all related to the Rigsbys, the document dump, and publicity efforts about all of that.

First, the Scruggses argue that because they have been disqualified as counsel, the Rigsbys disqualified as witnesses, and the Rigsby documents have been excluded, none of that has any relevance any longer. They note that there are only two documents that relate to the Rigsby claims at all (they say one engineering report and one post-it note).  They also assert the Fifth Amendment and argue that the act of producing these documents can be incriminating, doing some hand-waving about threats from Judge Acker in Alabama (threats that seem pretty well concluded) and the possibility that disclosure of the documents could have an impact on sentencing.

A free drink to anyone who can make sense to me how documents that the Scruggs firm once claimed were the basis of the bad-faith claim in the McIntosh case no longer have relevance in the McIntosh case, and how State Farm is not entitled to actually see the documents that Judge Senter has excluded from evidence (for instance, in order to prepare its motion in limine to exclude them– the general interpretation of Judge Senter’s disqualification order is that, where plaintiff can show they got a document from another source, they can get them in.  That issue is not going to quietly go away).

There is a side-argument about whether State Farm had continued to brief the matter after briefs were closed,  and the magistrate has stayed his order until the Scruggs objections are resolved.

h/t Y’allPolitics for the heads-up about the Slabbed post. And, as an aside, I can make no more sense of Y’all’s conclusion that all of this means the McIntosh case should be dropped. Perhaps in the sense of “put this thing out of its misery,” but all this satellite litigation going way south doesn’t tell me a thing about whether the McIntoshes’ lawsuit has merit.