If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the Folo RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Or just “a phenomenal fixer”?
NYT has a new story up, with a nice big photo and credit to the Eagle’s Bruce Newman. But as an indication of the paper’s not-quite-all-over-itness on this story, I offer this quote:
Friends and colleagues called Mr. Scruggs a charming man who dressed impeccably. He is a skilled lawyer and debater, said Victor E. Schwartz, a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, who has squared off against Mr. Scruggs in debates over the last 20 years.
‘The sad thing here is that he didn’t need to cheat the system,’ said Mr. Schwartz, who is general counsel to the American Tort Reform Association. ‘He was a phenomenal lawyer.’
Perchance Mr. Schwartz has a bit of an agenda here?
SOO SICK OF PEOPLE SAYING DICKIE WAS A GREAT LAWYER. HE WAS NOT!
A) He made his money off asbestos. No asbestos lawyer, plaintiff or defense, ever goes to trial. They just force the companies into settlement due to the massive amount of exposure.
B) The Miss. Supreme court has him on 9 appeals. He has appealed nine cases in his grandiose career. NINE.
C) He BRIBED A JUDGE FOR A MOTION HE WOULD HAVE WON. He is sooo stupid that he will spend the next five years in jail bribing a judge to rule in his favor on a motion to compel arbitration. The last 27 times this issue has come in front of Miss. Supreme Court they have sent the matter to arbitration. The Supreme Court has also taken this position.
D) Every time he had to go near a trial he ran and got Ron Motley.
e) The Ritalin cases and the charitable hospital cases are two examples of his stupidity.
f) Mike Lewis came up with the tobacco idea.
g) Finally, the hurricane cases. What idiot would file them in federal court when the they could have been filed in harrison county state court? and What idiot would select a bench trial when you could have 12 citizens of harrison county deciding the issue
H) Who the hell pays a fact witness? Did he not think this would come up in a deposition? or testimony?
” a charming man who dressed impeccably”
Kewl.
“Whatcolorwasthepantsuit” reporting lives on!
Agree wholeheartedly on C. On G, didn’t he file in state court, and State Farm removed to Senter’s court? On H, didn’t he pay for witnesses in Big Tobacco litigation? He did it once and no objection, so he thought he could do it again. Now, some lawyers get around this by hiring them as expert witnesses, and give them real work, investigations, reports, etc. to do.
lotus: on the “phenomenal lawyer” question, since Dickie is one of just a handful of lawyers who won 2 lawsuits worth billions of dollars, including the top dollar figure in history, I’d say yes. And he WAS more of a dealmaker, in the Trump mode. He’ll go down with Belli, Bailey and now Scruggs. In the movie, I can see his triumphs on display, but I am appalled with the way he treated his fellow law partners. His only true friends were Barrett, Nutt (the banker) and Motley.
I will say this: Dickie was very successful financially. Was that because he dressed well? Was it because he hires good public relations people? Was it because he greased the wheels to success with bribes? Or was it something else, or a combination of all of those? I don’t know.
I worked for him briefly, early in his career, and didn’t really see any qualities that I thought were likely to lead to wealth and fame. He was very smart, though.
Dickie abused and used people from what I have read so no I don’t think he was/is a phenomenal lawyer. Like to ask a question though what was his substance abuse that he needs so much help for? Anyone think that there might be more to come out than what is being spoken about and why?
I believe someone nailed it earlier when they noted that Keker is smart and that claiming a drug dependency for which you obtain rehabilitation in prison can get a full year lopped off your prison sentence. I believe Dickie’s drug dependency is as big a sham as the Twisted Sisters’ false claims — it’s to get Dickie something he wants, in my opinion, and nothing more.
The question is: “Would you call Dickie a phenomenal lawyer?”
Labels mean nothing, but consider your answer in this light: in the history of the Republic there have been thousands of civil actions seeking to hold the tobacco industry liable in money damages for the effects of smoking on the human body. Not one … not one … was ever successful. Not one.
Scruggs fashioned a different approach to the problem. He and his co-counsel faced off against one of the largest industries in the nation and fleets of the highest-paid and presumably smartest corporate defense lawyers in America. I’m talking about law firms so large and so wealthy that they build and completely occupy skyscraper buildings in Richmond, Charlotte, Raleigh, Lexington, Baltimore, Washington (no skyscrapers there, but still some large buildings), and elsewhere.
Tobacco could, would, and did throw money at its defense endlessly … tobacco would outmoney and out-connive their opponents until the opponents were spent, literally and figuratively.
Scruggs didn’t destroy the tobacco industry, unfortunately, but he made it buckle and bend and made it pay up for at least a little bit of the human wreckage it caused and blithely continues to cause.
Does anyone think the tobacco industry would have paid a penny to anyone or to any state or to any opposing legal team if there were any weaknesses in the opponents’ case? Does anyone here think the tobacco industry is paying this money because of corporate altruism?
Say what you will … and I know you will … but Scruggs whacked tobacco so hard that the industry paid out billions (still chicken feed to the industry over the long haul) to state governments and probably a billion or so to Scruggs.
Now if you want to conclude that the tobacco industry just thought very highly of Dick Scruggs and wanted to reward him for being a friend of the industry or a friend of Trent Lott or a friend of John McCain or a Great American Naval Aviator or merely a pest to be paid off to go away, go ahead and think it … reality will ever penetrate those kinds of thoughts.
If you truly want an insight into the character of the tobacco industry, consider who, right here in good ole Mississippi, remains one of its biggest champions and defenders: Gov. Mushmouth hisseff.
You can take your pick of labels to slap on Dick Scruggs. Unfortunately, one of them is felon. If that’s phenomenal to you, then so be it.
Good points, Ben. I’m just hoping that, when we come out on the other end of all this, something of that settlement still stands. And someday — someday — someone can finally extend it as far as it really needs to go.
(This comment written by a nicotine addict.)
Big Tobacco’s victorys in the past were in one on one cases, the State’s cases were to recover medicare /medicaid payments for tobacco related illnesses. Since statute of limitations didn’t run against the State it covered an enormous time frame, plus State was able to combine all its claims together in one lawsuit in Chancery Court without a jury. Once Big Tobacco lost those 3 battles, i.e. statute of limitations, combining all claims in one and Chancery Court in Jackson County, the handwriting was on the wall. Also with Trent on his side there was the threat of FDA regulation. The truth is the settlement did not cost Big Tobbaco a DIME. Its paid out over time and they just added it to the price of cigarette. Now I don’t smoke so I don’t care about increased price of cigarettes but truthfully the tobacco settlement just ended up being another tax on tobacco.
Re tobacco settlement. I give Scruggs some credit for strategizing and marshalling resources. But even then, his "ethically challenged" nature was apparent. (If his handling of asbestos cases was typical, his lack of ethics was probably evident then, too.)
I believe Scruggs’ unethical actions, plus the strategy of filing in a kangaroo court, accounted for the tobacco companies’ willingness to settle, not his legal prowess. Such things as stolen documents, a witness on the payroll, leaking documents to a foolish (paid?) Congressman eager to grandstand, manipulation of the press, whatever PL Blake did, who knows what else. Great legal work it was not.
And what was the tobacco settlement? It put Mississippi and other states into the tobacco business. After all, if smoking were prohibited or even unprofitable, we would lose millions that our legislature has proven perfectly willing to spend on matters unrelated to any supposed cost to the system from smoking. If someone attempted to forbid smoking altogether, our own legislature would be loudly defending Big Tobacco. We can’t afford it!
The tobacco companies bought peace, not so much from the lawsuits as from annihilation (and from competition by new entrants). Their payment was to come primarily from future profits — " based on prices that would already reflect the settlement cost in the first place. I suspect the critical piece to the settlement was the lawyers’ compensation.
By the way, this "brilliant" theory — that tobacco companies caused citizens on Medicaid to engage in behavior they would not otherwise have engaged in that directly cost the system funds for which it is entitled to compensation by the tobacco companies — " is a rather dangerous theory, not to mention a theory that is questionable on legal grounds.
I think many people are willing to overlook the tactics used against the tobacco companies, the nature of the theory and the nature of the settlement because they don’t like smoking. As if somehow the end justifies the means and the legal system can be subverted if the cause is good enough.
So many people are willing to say the settlement was a great victory without looking very hard at it. This does not make me feel proud, as a lawyer or a Mississippian.
Dickie took Mike Lewis’s idea, got Mike Moore’s support, collected troops in a masterful fashion and then connived his way to settlement. And riches. And a reputation as a brilliant lawyer.
Count me out.
PS I hope it’s not relevent to anyone, but I don’t smoke.
I believe Victor Schwartz admires Dickie Scruggs for two particular reasons:
1) Scruggs is a gentleman, charming, disarming, as is Schwartz.
2) Scruggs was phenomenally successful as far as making money is concerned, which is the measure many use, right or wrong.
I break bread with Schwartz every two months, usually sub sandwiches. We have talked a lot about l’affaire Scruggs since last year. He just cannot get his arms around why Scruggs would so something so so c0rrupt, so risky with so little money at stake.
A primer on megalomania and pathological narcissism wont’ cut it with Schwartz. He just keeps asking why Scruggs would have done something so bad for little. (I do not think this merits an application of “OK, we know what you are, now we just have to determine the price.”)
As far as Schwartz using the term “phenomenal lawyer” is concerned, consider the source: He is a lawyer lobbyist, though he did a bit of plaintiffs litigation back in the Pleistocene era, before becoming a very young law dean for a while.
Schwartz doesn’t do courtrooms, though he does a lot of legislative hearings.
He makes the world safe for big Pharma and manufacturers of products that hurt. I expect they pay him well.
When he speaks of phenomenal lawyering, he understands that Scruggs’ cunning outside the coutroom and having others do the heavy lifting inside, when it came to that(e.g. Ron Motley), won a lot of the marbles. That impresses.
Schwartz and Scruggs did spend some time together and apparently enjoyed each other’s company, despite being on opposites sides of a fence. For that matter, Ralph Nader, even pre-Bush v. Gore, likes and trusts Schwartz as his go-to-foil. They cook things up together.
Agenda? It’s this: whenever the tort pot is stirred, no matter who the chef or whose goose gets cooked at any given time, Schwartz gets paid. The more it’s stirred, the more he’s paid.
But not nearly as much as Scruggs made. That impresses.
As complete an explanation as we’re apt to find, isnb, so thank you.
Your thoughts on the sentence, the sentenced, the prospects, any li’l ol’ thang?
I don’t have much to add to all the great stuff folks have written here about the sentence.
One of the factors in sentencing is simply to make an example for others to see. It is hard to imagine any case — the player, the context, the deed — that begs more for such.
As for the others, it’s time for Let’s Make a Deal and for as many other shoes to drop as Imelda had in her closet. Metaphor mix: Balducci, for example, can change direction in the open field quicker than any NFL running back I’ve ever seen.
Sentencing can be used to set other kinds of examples under the political and judicial laws of thermodynamics: when the heat is on someone else, there’s likely less of it on you.
I forget the details of how one aspect of this works. If Scruggs gets convicted on something else, and maybe something else again, can he get a shot at re-jiggering everything, including the sentence he got this week, by giving the government some whopping big fish to fry?
He could develop a whole lot of remorse, you know.
All Things Considered on public radio had an interview this afternoon with Peter Boyer, the guy who wrote the New Yorker piece on Dickie last month. The website says the audio will be available online 7 pm ET. Mr. Boyer has a nice southern accent, which I always like to hear spoken intelligently over the airwaves.
I remember from reading Michael Orey’s “Assuming the Risk” that the Jackson County Chancery Court (without a jury) played a very important role in the tobacco suit. Scruggs fought hard to keep the case there and without a jury. From page 280: “In subsequent years, tobacco company lawyers and PR representatives would gripe about Mike Moore and his ‘handpicked’ judge in Pascagoula.” Could the wheels have been greased in the chancery court?
Orey notes that Chancellor Williams Myers got the case by default, and Myers was appointed to the court by Governor Fordice. I don’t want to besmirch anyone’s reputation by the above question, but that’s what happens when a lawyer has a pattern of behavior as Scruggs did. One begins to question whether every successful case involved corruption.
Orey notes on page 266 ( regarding the hiring of Pete Johnson to “slip a minor word change into a bill” that “authorized the attorney general to hire counsel for a contingent fee” ) that “[e]ven though Johnson’s stealthy maneuvering proved unnecessary, it indicates the lengths to which Scruggs was willing to go to pave the way for success.” Thus my question: could the wheels have been greased in the Jackson County Chancery Court?
Nomiss @ 16.
My reason for referring to a kangaroo court.
Boyer’s full New Yorker article on Scruggs is available on the website.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/19/080519fa_fact_boyer
I see Dickie Scruggs as a white Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.
From The Penthouse To The Big House
David Novak did time as a white-collar crook at Eglin Federal Prison Camp (Pensacola, FL), aka Club Fed. Now he advises first-time felons on how to survive life on the inside. Hey, Ken and Jeff (and Bernie and Sam and Dennis), would you like his number?
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/62/realitycheck.html?page=0%2C0
Dixie68@19 – could you explain exactly what you mean?
Concerning the Federal Pens, why especially are the Federal Pens the Country Clubs of jail time?
It is white collar crime, a Federal charge that will wind a person up in a real jail is only kid-napping, not money crimes?
My favourite person who ended up in Federal pen is the late Attorney General John Mitchell,
when he entered the Federal Pen at Maxwell Air Force Base he told the press “it was great to be back in Alabama.”
Are there only lawyers in southern Federal pens.?
Several years ago, I had a banking client that was ripped off by some officers and directors – - over $5 million dollars in fraudulent loans. Some of those guys wound up in federal prison, and one went to Pensacola. Based on what I have heard about their experiences, I don’t think any jail is a country club. You may not be in Angola, but jail is jail. I don’t think it is easy to be in jail anywhere, particularly if you are a person who formerly had some success in your professional life and you suddenly find yourself a prisoner. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t go to jail, but it does make me think that 2 1/2 and 5 years in this instance will be long, painful punishment for these people, particularly since some of them may have more jail time coming their way.
I want to weigh in that I think the NY Times article is a good one, probably as good a job as they’ve done in covering Scruggs, ever. They have the factual details told right and well, and get the context of the sentencing, too.
The “phenomenal lawyer” business I can’t even really argue about. I’ve balked at people who call him a “trial lawyer,” or in terms of courtroom success and conventional notions of what a litigator does. On the other hand, he really has spearheaded total-war approaches to tort litigation that greatly raised the stakes and dollars involved. Even if the ideas he used weren’t original to him, he made remarkable use of them. You’d have to view the level at which he succeeded as phenomenal.
But you also have to take into account a few things: First, his acknowledgment as long ago as the interviews about the tobacco settlement that part of his methods involved working “the dark side.” It seems clear to me that back as far as the asbestos era he made decisions to pursue his ends by fair means or foul. Second, his choice of methods included things like massive public relations wars that, while not illegal, raise strong ethical and moral issues for me.
I would say his particular genius was more public relations– he was brilliant at selling, or getting someone to sell, narratives that journalists would take to like ducks to water (and resell them in new contexts– e.g. the repeat performances of the Insider theme). The lawsuit-as-total-war idea he seemed to have often looks (if you review the dockets of cases his firm was litigating) like pointless flailing around to me. I wonder if the approach ever worked for him outside a context where he had a judge giving him the advantage of home cooking.
Observation: In the DeLaughter case it’s likely they’ll make a good strong argument that the bribe was $3 mil. I can’t imagine a deal being cut as sweet as the one in the case that was just resolved. There is going to be a lot more time involved if that case ever comes up, and it will begin to look life-sentence-like.
hmmm. I need to raise this point in a new post. More later.