Can everyone agree that that Renfroe against the Rigsbys is The Blob of federal court litigation, an amorphous mass slowly expanding to engulf all in its path? I say this having just noticed (updating one spin-off, the suit the Scruggs firm filed– it’s alleged to be a kind of sneak preemptive attack– against the Zuckerman firm. More about all that later) that there’s a McIntosh v. State Farm matter in the Fourth Circuit court of appeals.
That would be the Fourth Circuit that is found off there to the East on this map.
It seems that last year sometime, State Farm subpoenaed everything AOL had from the Rigsbys’ during the time of the data dump, and the Rigsbys’ moved to quash (here’s their memo on their motion to quash, here’s the SF response). The federal district court agreed with the Rigsbys and threw in that it would be better to hash this whole thing out down in Mississippi where the fight started in the first place. And so State Farm appealed to the Fourth Circuit, where it’s rocking along now.
Ah, good ol’ Steve McQueen, R.I.P.