Excerpt of the Day: WSJ on Dickie Scruggs
Following in the heels of Eliot Spitzer, a noted tort bar corporate torturer bites the dust:
Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, a founding father of the modern mega-tort class-action industry, pleaded guilty yesterday to trying to bribe a judge.
….. Now it is Mr. Scruggs who has thrown up his hands and entered a plea. He may face five years in prison. Specifically he has pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe Lafayette County, Mississippi, County Circuit Court Judge Henry L. Lackey. Mr. Scruggs was seeking a court ruling in his favor in a mass settlement in cases culled from Hurricane Katrina. At issue were $26.5 million in disputed legal fees. Judge Lackey called in the FBI.
The question buzzing through legal circles yesterday was why a guy that rich and that good at beating money out of corporations would put the whole game at risk this way. We’ll sum it up in one famous, potent word: hubris. After the personal ruin seen in the Spitzer and Scruggs cases this week, it is hard to blink at the irony here. They made their mark yelling that the rich and famous were subject to the laws of mere mortals. Once larger than life, both men have shown why that’s still true.
Thank God for judges like Mr. Lackey, who was not a lackey when it counted.
The unasked question is how many judges said yes prior to Lackey saying “no?”
Comment by largebill — March 16, 2008 @ 1:40 pm