Scruggs Nation, May 12
The sun never sets on the Scruggs Nation. Sometimes it is eclipsed, true, but it never sets. Dickie Scruggs, after a long absence, is back in the news. This Clarion-Ledger story says the Justice Department is looking into bringing racketeering charges against The Scruggs. My oh my, sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Do you remember last year when The Scruggs announced his RICO lawsuit against State Farm? (The case, I believe, still features no plaintiff lawyers following Judge Senter's disqualification of the Katrina(less) Litigation Group, formerly known as the Scruggs(less) Katrina Group).
link to the story, please? thanks!
Whoops! Got it fixed, thanks for the heads up.
A few quotes and comments from the incomparable Jerry Mitchell:
"difficult to say a sitting judge is a racketeer;" "scruggs didn't corruptly influence Judge DeLaughter;" "...not what Congress had in mind;" RICO
"designed to combat organized crime."
There's some objective journalism and serious fact-finding for you.
Being a cynical sort, I've always got to check with my favorite wordsmith - M. Webster. He says that RACKETEER means one who obtains money by an illegal enterprise ususally involving intimidation; or, the practice of extortion. I think I can figure out
"crime" and "organized" for myself; maybe even "organized crime." I'm giving Congress some credit here on this RICO thing. Nevermind the acronym that just rolls off the tonuge. They got the racketeers, the influence peddlers, and the low-lifes who who huddle up and figure out how to corrupt others.
Cool. Starting to sound familiar, too.
Well, it ain't exactly Roger Dangerfield's old line, but if I've said it before, it's not as if the old Dixie Mafia didn't transition rather well into the new one. And, while I tried to post the "Texas connection", there's still enough of the long line from the yachts to stretch more than 90 miles of coastal highway - hi-way 90 doesn't just begin in Pascagoula and go straight to New Orleans, the old Dixie Mafia bag city road -one way to Jackson, one way to the Big Easy but all from the parking lot and yacht club meets on highway 90. It goes back. It comes back. But, if the Feds were really working, it would have been the same in the past 60 years, and characters change, and yet, the concept is what it is - it's racketeering, even before the criminal RICO and even now in the civil RICO. I get weary of the hoot'nanny narrow minds of the lawyers who seem to know the old and the new South enough to parody the reality of what at least has always been the quality of Mississippi's mindset - yes, that is "get 'er done," sorry to say, but it's where it got done. I just wish the odd scholar in law would drop dead and playing with what they know in the generic sense - because, y'all, it's not to me a shot from space, it's not flak from mars, it's not the High from Crispy Creams, it's not the Gumbo and the "whole clothe mumbo jumbo from Moore", it IS the racketeering. If you think Gabby Hayes of Holiwood got it in Ghosts of Mississippi, or "there's a new look to the Jackson Capitol,y'all! - go there. If it isn't the tobacco settlement boys - and I mean the Texas connection too, Don - we need to know what kinda "whole clothe" has and is presently being spun and who's doing the spinning? I think it's just another suicide Lincoln with a body in the truck at Jitney. Where IS THAT "whole clothe"?It's so big it's a racket, and it's got so many permutations, it's a Rubrik cube.
actually it sounds more like a match for state farm than Scruggs. "organizing together to defraud policy holders".
The irony continues unabated. Scruggs, who once proudly pointed his finger at SF and yelled RICO, now may be charged with mafia-like RICO charges himself.
How ironic?
I'm waiting for Belle to spin this as State Farm's PR machine at work again.
Were the payments to the Ribsby sisters not public knowledge?
"Were the payments to the Ribsby sisters not public knowledge?"
Exactly. I think it was reported late 2006 or early 2007. David may have the exact date when it was first reported.
David, can you tell us when the payments became public knowledge. Was it when the sisters appeared on national television or when the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal published aricles on them. They were heralded as whistleblowers and likened to Wigand from tobacco days. Why is there such outrage now? I am just trying to understand the whole scenerio of this Mon. morning quarterbacking that is going on.
JSmith, I could look back in my posts and see when the first time I wrote about it, but I'm pressed for time. I know I wrote about it probably as early as March 2007, possibly earlier. I suspect the information came out in the hearings in Renfroe v. Rigsby in fed court in Alabama in, say, December 2006, January 2007, when testimony was taken in a show cause proceeding and discovery in that case.
In summer of 2007, State Farm moved to disqualify Scruggs, and one of the issues raised by State Farm and its expert, Charles Wolfram, was these very payments. This came after the first depositions of the Rigsbys by State Farm in May 2007. So it was known back then, but in the original motion, Judge Senter ruled that State Farm had waited too long to object and therfore waived its right to object, considering the welfare of the clients. However, at that time there was much that was not known, and more subsequently came to light in depositions of the sisters in November 2007 and January 2008. All the further details of what came out escape me without referring back to my posts, I wrote quite a bit about this, especially in a long post re-evaluating the role of the Rigsby sisters in December 2007.
One can say the cumulative weight of these revelations, including the taint of the indictment and guilty plea of Scruggs, made a difference in the second ruling by Senter, which disqualified the KLG and all associated lawyers. Why the Monday morning quarterbacking? Because it stinks to pay witnesses, especially when they took documents illicitly. Whatever their motives, and in many ways I feel these two were misled by others, the difference between a hero whistleblower and a disgraced striver is usually which side won. As Churchill said, "history will be kind to me, because I intend to write the history." When you lose, you don't write the history. On a basic level, without any other sort of analysis, we can say this is a truism of human conduct and opinion. The analysis goes much deeper than that, of course, so deep I think it can only truly be explored through a creative production such as the musical I am writing, the Katrina Follies, which includes some great showstopping numbers like "Everybody love to do da data dump" and "I'm just a Trailer Lawyer." I've got all these great tunes and words for it, but unfortunately I cannot read or write music or play any instruments, and my singing is lousy, so this is a handicap for a songwriter.
But I'm confident some muse will come along who can orchestrate all these great songs, choreograph the show and produce it, and we'll take it on the road throughout Mississippi.
My inspiration, of course, is the brilliant musical production of "Gov," the story of disgraced former Arizona governor Evan Mecham, which I saw when I lived in Phoenix in the 1990s. As great as that was, the Katrina Follies will far surpass it -- I can see every high school in the state wanting to put on a production of it. I mean, who wouldn't want to play the lead role of Scruggs, singing the theme song, Toys for Dickie, based on his now famous statement: "When I was growing up, I was so poor I wouldn't have had anything to play with if I wasn't a boy." An actual statement of Scruggs, turned into a touching ballad, no pun intended! So many great lines in this song, like "Everybody says that Dickie's got a Magic Jurisdiction." Might even make it to Broadway! I just need the right break, and this show will be this millenium's Cats or Miss Saigon.