Rigsby update: forgotten but not gone
For those who remember the heady Katrina litigation days of the Ride of the Rigsbys -- appearing on ABC's 20/20, acclaimed as alleged whistleblowers -- these times are very different for the sisters. They've slipped in the celebrity rankings to a most unenviable category: forgotten but not gone. The inevitable next stage? Jointly occupying a corner box in the New, New Hollywood Squares, I suppose, hosted by John McEnroe or some such.
Contestant: I'll take the Rigsby Sisters for the block.
McEnroe: Kerri and Cori Rigsby. What famous tourist attraction features more than 200 kinds of reptiles?
Rigsby Sisters: Snake Farm!!
Contestant: I'm going to disagree.
McEnroe: The correct answer is the San Diego Zoo. Circle gets the square. By the way, Rigsby Sisters, you've answered either "Snake Farm" or "State Fraud" to every question this week.
I saw this Anita Lee story in the Sun Herald about the latest on the Rigsbys. The case brought against them by E.A. Renfroe, a State Farm contractor who did claims adjusting for the insurer during Katrina, a case in which they were utterly routed, is nearing final settlement. Have I gotten totally out of touch, or are the names under the Rigsbys' pictures reversed in the story? Not Anita's fault, someone else other than the reporter does that kind of stuff at a newspaper. You know your status is in free fall when they put someone else's name under your picture. In a month or two, folks won't even get the Rigsby part right, the cutline under the picture will have the name of some other former celebrity of yesteryear, like, say, Gary Coleman of Diff'rent Strokes.
The story has some pdf's of stuff to do with the winding up of the Renfroe v. Rigsby case in Alabama federal court and an interesting filing from a few days ago in the False Claims Act case, Ex rel. Rigsby, in federal court in Mississippi, which to me appears to be tottering like a 90-year-old guy without his walker. Here's that pdf. Looks like more of the same old to me, the usual blah blah about the Brian Ford engineering reports on the McIntosh property and so forth. You may remember these reports from the unusual detail that the first one attributed all the damage to wind, and strangely enough, Kerri Rigsby herself later wound up greenlighting the flood payment to the McIntoshes. So there would seem to be some inconsistency there. As Gary Coleman might say, "What you talkin' 'bout, Rigsbys?"
The filing seems to be a plea to be allowed to engage in discovery before a May 20 hearing on this case before Judge L.T. Senter Jr., and Judge Senter has already said this won't happen -- the basis for the case is supposed to be first-hand knowledge of the massive fraud the Rigsbys allege. If you read the document, you can see the first-hand knowledge is pretty thin, just a couple of anecdotes. Didn't see anything in there about Kerri Rigsby approving the flood payment, maybe that will be covered in the next brief. Or maybe the brief will say Gary Coleman approved the flood payment.
All right, so that's it for this post, except for one more thing. Let's finish it off with the newest song I've added to my work-in-progress musical, The Katrina Follies. This song, Don't Ignore Rigsbys, as I posted about two days ago, appears in the second act, and is sung by the actors portraying Dickie Scruggs and Mississippi AG Jim Hood, to the tune of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby.
Ah, look at those two whistleblowers
Ah, look at those two whistleblowers
Don't ignore Rigsbys
Picked out the fraud from the files where Snake Farm had it hid
That's what they did
Met in a trailer, accessed computers and lawyers were there
Just 'cause they dared
All the whistleblowers, where do they all come from?
All the whistleblowers, where do they all belong?
Why are you dissin' John McEnroe?
Thanks, David. All the stuff in AL, and trying to keep up with it, can give a guy a headache.