Today in Scruggsiana
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Okay, Scruggs foloers, not to leave you without a fix while I’m thinking more about the other side of the globe, go read, check out, or otherwise cogitate upon:
(a) the New York Times‘ new story (and enjoy the photos).
I think it has Dickie’s move from Pascagoula to Oxford misdated, doesn’t it? Didn’t he set up in Oxford around 2004-ish? Any other corrections, amplifications, whatnot that our Lafayette Countians et al. would suggest?
(b) a surprise a reader has emailed to point out: Scruggs Law Firm has no website.
It’s listed on lawyers.com and Martindale-Hubbell, of course — and Scruggs Katrina Group’s site is still up (and still interesting) — but there’s no independent site for the firm located in that pretty building on The Square photographed by NYT. In this day and age, what to make of that?
(c) the latest from Rossmiller, concerning an exchange of letters that tends to suggest, at least to Rossmiller, that Tim Balducci wasn’t aware of FBI interest in him (and so didn’t flip on Dickie) until sometime after August 1.
The first (July 11, 2007) letter from Stephen Livingston, president of the Union County bar association, to the General Counsel of the Mississippi Bar, complains of Steve Patterson and Bo (Beau?) Buse, non-attorney employees of Balducci’s firm, apparently being wrongly represented as lawyers and/or practicing law without licenses. Balducci’s flippant response suggests no awareness of much bigger trouble to come, Rossmiller thinks.
Discuss.
lotus
December 9, 2007 at 9:53 am
Scruggs was definitely in Oxford before Katrina. That’s an odd miss. And according to the most definitive accounts of the tobacco litigation (e.g. Cigarette Nation), the theory on which they got a settlement was not Scruggs’s or Moore’s idea at all, but rather the idea of a lawyer from the Delta named Mike Lewis.
December 9, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Can’t remember where, but something I read early on in this thing made the same mistake - tying Scruggs’s move to Oxford to his losing his house on the coast in Katrina.
Connecting dots where there aren’t any?
December 9, 2007 at 5:20 pm
NMC, if you have time to tell the Mike Lewis part of the story sometime, I’ll be interested in hearing more about that.
LD, maybe ’twas assumption passing for reportage? Again?
December 9, 2007 at 7:53 pm
This sure is starting to shape up as an “affair of honor”, isn’t it? Hard to believe someone who is as rich as Scruggs is would even bother about this much money, but it appears that, like many rich folks, he got that way partly because he’s happy to screw the people who work with him. At least, that’s my reading of the NYT article.
December 9, 2007 at 7:55 pm
The relative dinkiness of the bribe to someone like Scruggs, plus the risk just doesn’t add up for me.
I’m still scratching my head.
December 9, 2007 at 8:00 pm
there is a law review artcle that posed the idea before mike lewis. but it is undisputed he had the idea to pursue this on behalf of mississippi, and presented the idea to his ole miss class mate mike moore, who brought i scruggs (another classmate) and others
December 9, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Welcome back, Cujo, and welcome and thanks, MS Atty.
Anytime you want to put your feet up here and rare back and tell us more, please go right ahead on . . .
December 9, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Thanks, Lotus, it’s good to be back, if only for a short while. (Looks like I’m back to the old grind tomorrow).
While I agree it doesn’t make sense, AYLD,T, it does fit the portrait of someone who is obsessed with money. While it doesn’t strike me as the only plausible explanation, the words “pride goeth before the fall” could end up being the title of Lotus’ book on this case.
December 9, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Here is an interesting fact….I responded to an ad Scruggs ran in the paper for Video and pictures of Katrina….I shot both during the storm, one block from the beach in Pascagoula…my pictures and video have been used in trials against Insurance companies….I was to be reimbursed for my expenses…..todate I have never been paid….despite many calls to Zach…..(we are talking less than $100 bucks)…I guess I have the same problem John Jones has.
December 9, 2007 at 10:28 pm
But, Lordy, Cujo, wasn’t Scruggs at the absolute top of the world - at least the top of *his* world?
I mean, don’t they know the meaning of quitin’ while you’re ahead over there?
Whew.
December 10, 2007 at 5:02 am
Welcome, Jim Treadway! The first thing I want you to know is how sorry I am about all you and your neighbors have been through. As someone who moved to Coral Gables (just south of Miami) two weeks before Hurricane Andrew, I have the merest inkling of what that includes.
The Bush in charge then was near worthless to us too — but of course nothing compared to his spawn.
January 10, 2008 at 12:04 am
The tobacco case is most interesting on the points brought up here. Lewis told Moore, Moore told Scruggs. Then, during an asbestos trial, Scruggs mentioned it to Ron Mottley who about jumped out of his skin right there in the courtroom, and so it began! Most folks don’t seem to recall Mottley as the lawyer who actually teamed with Scruggs on Asbestos many moons ago it seems.