Insurance Coverage Blog

Some of the things that have been going on in the Scruggs Nation that past few weeks, not all of which I have had time to touch on yet.

-- A story from Anita Lee of the Sun Herald: E.A. Renfroe is asking for the dismissal of Ex rel. Rigsby, the False Claims Act case brought against Renfroe, State Farm and others by the purported "whistleblower" Rigsby sisters and their now disgraced lawyer and employer, Dickie "Magic Jurisdiction" Scruggs.  

-- I've mentioned this before, but only briefly.  In the McIntosh v. State Farm case, the Thunderdome of Katrina litigation, Scruggs was ordered earlier this month to turn over the following:

• All communications between Scruggs and Brian Ford, the guy who was interested in a $10,000 a month consulting job with the Scruggs Katrina Group ("Hey, why should be Rigsbys be the only ones to make some "consulting" dough off this thing!").  Ford, as you may recall, was the engineer who went to the McIntosh home and came back with a report that essentially overlooked flood damage -- a considerable oversight, in that Kerri Rigsby herself later authorized payment of flood insurance to the McIntoshes.
• Communications between Scruggs and the media about Hurricane Katrina, including ABC, which engaged in a brief spasm of "whistleblower" stories about the Rigsbys, including a big 20/20 piece, but which has been strangely silent of late.
• Any documents Scruggs picked up from a "highly placed source" at State Farm.  You may remember that the Scruggs claimed in a media interview that he picked up documents from such a source in Bloomington, Illinois, State Farm's headquarters.  I am skeptical this ever happened, unless whoever this supposedly was went through the trash or is someone who took complete leave of their senses and lost all instincts of self-preservation.  People will say all kinds of things to reporters that are half true or not remotely true. 
• All documents related to any financial interest Scruggs still has in Katrina litigation against State Farm.  This last one is interesting -- I've wondered myself what interest and/or control Scruggs still has in Katrina litigation.  Here's an Associated Press story on it from a while back.

-- How long do you figure it will be until Scruggs, the Rigsby sisters and possibly a whole lot of others get sued by State Farm and State Farm employees over their roles in Katrina litigation?  My guess? Not too long.

--  What in the world is that federal grand jury doing in the Southern District of Mississippi?  You know, that new grand jury that was impaneled earlier this year to replace the outgoing grand jury, in the investigation of alleged Katrina insurer fraud that has spent wheelbarrows of federal dough but returned results that can be summarized as follows: bupkis.

-- Scruggs to be unable to benefit by Lazarus Ruling -- at Law and More.

-- Someone from the website Slabbed has been incessantly trying to promote the site in the comments to this blog.  As you may or may not know, no comment appears on this blog unless I hit a button saying it will be published.  Sometimes when I'm too busy Marjory Morford fulfills this function.  Excessive self-promotion is one of the things that makes me hit the delete button on comments submitted. But in this instance I'm going to throw out a hat tip to Slabbed, if for no other reason than to stop the incessant spamming of my comments box, regarding a post on some developments yesterday in the McIntosh case, involving Scruggs saying he didn't receive notice of State Farm's discovery motion. 

 

David, you mentioned in this article that you wondered when SF would sue someone? Would the documents be exhibit A? If so, I do not believe SF will bring suits.

Is there any way these documents will have to be produced before Dickie's July 2nd sentencing?

When will the avalanche of malpractice lawsuits be filed against D.S. as predicted in late March?