State Farm and Scruggs shoving match over deposition scheduling (by NMC)
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As noted in the prior post, Scruggs is in a very aggressive shoving match with State Farm about scheduling the deposition today. State Farm this morning filed a State Farm motion to clarify the judge’s order, basically trying to put a halt to what seems clearly to me a stall (Scruggs lawyers would say they’re just trying to work out reasonable scheduling arrangements, but they are pushing this as close as possible to the “complete by 5:00 PM” deadline, and not being flexible at all). Here is the Scrugs response.
Scruggs’s lawyers position is that it won’t take but an hour or so for Scruggs to take the Fifth, they’re busy (Keker in minor surgery– but this whole thing was delayed so he could be here?– and LeBlanc flying to Oxford) before 3:00 PM, so just be a nice guy and delay things to then. Giving the history and bad blood here, I don’t see much possibility for a “nice guy” resolution here, particularly when they’re telling the State Farm lawyer’s they are silly people.
Update: Word has it a crowd of lawyers trooped over to the Federal Courthouse and back. No sign of a ruling on Pacer. Also, the link is fixed.
2nd Update: Updated after Researcher noted in comment that the received-wisdom account of State Farm executives taking the Fifth may not be accurate. Since the SKG website is no longer on the web, we can’t check to be sure, so I’ve corrected it.
February 4, 2008 at 1:12 pm
The 2nd pdf is not coming up.
February 4, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Gah, wotta time for technical difficulties!
February 4, 2008 at 1:52 pm
“Whatever time the deposition consumes will be the result of the question, the
statement of privilege, and Mr. Scruggs’s statement that he will follow his lawyer’s advice. If
State Farm’s counsel wishes to prolong that process, it can be for no other reason than
harassment. If the Court is inclined to enter an order at this time, this Court should order that
once Mr. Scruggs has asserted his privileges in response to the first question, that State Farm
counsel lists all of its questions at once, and permit Mr. Scruggs to refuse to answer them all at
once. That process cannot possibly take more than one hour.”
Has Keker lost his mind? The law unequivocally does not allow one to do this. You have to invioke the 5th to each question.
February 4, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Note to Judges. In the future please make your instructions crystal clear to any of Scruggs attorneys or the same type of pissing match will ensue after every motion. I wonder how many depositions Scruggs has demanded over the years? Did he put up with the kind of crap he is dishing out in this case?
February 4, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I think the link is fixed now, btw.
February 4, 2008 at 2:18 pm
This is my third time to post this, but I do not believe that the Lecky King video that was on the internet was from a deposition by Scruggs. The only video I have seen was the Watkins trial in Oklahoma. She took the 5th because of Katrina investigations. Attorney Jeff Marr was asking about Haag Engineering and other firms and State Farm employees who worked both the Oklahoma tornadoes and Hurricane Katrina.
SKG may have posted it on their website, but so did the Sun Herald at the time.
I believe SKG did have depositions in which King and Lisa Wachter took the 5th, but I have never seen videos of them online.
February 4, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Researcher, thanks for pointing out that Lecky King’s “taking the 5th” video wasn’t a Scruggs deposition. The fact that Scruggs published the video on his own Scruggs Katrina web site simply makes him all the more a scoundrel as I see it.
Here’s his page from the web archives:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070718013018/http://scruggskatrinagroup.wordpress.com/
Here’s the paragraph on this archived page which linked to the video on his web site:
Even more shocking however is State Farm’s response to these serious charges that are substantiated by its own emails. Instead of denying the charges, its PR “spokesman” says that the allegations are “old news.” If these charges are “old news,” then State Farm is in even more trouble than I thought. It is old news in that they are playing the same old scams and games with policyholders. This pattern of altering coercing and changing facts went on in other states, in other disasters, at other policyholder’s expense. (See para. 73 of the complaint for how they did this in Oklahoma; and see Lecky King taking the Fifth repeatedly in proceedings.) We will bring to light just what has been going on for a long, long time.
The video was published on this page: http://web.archive.org/web/20070718013018/http://www.scruggskatrinagroup.com/vids/lecky_medium.mov
which was not archived.
February 4, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Thanks, Rog. I’ve been too busy with other stuff to pull that out of any of the various caches. I appreciate the links.