Dickie Scruggs

State Farm turns the tables on Hurricane Katrina lawyers

Last week I published a feature story online, "The Siege of State Farm," attempting to encapsulate the extraordinary, multifaceted assault upon State Farm and the insurance industry that was mounted by plaintiffs lawyer Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. (The story will appear in the May 5 issue of Fortune, which is also the annual Fortune 500 edition.)

In the process of trimming that article to a MORE

Dickie Scruggs' incredible shrinking wallet

It appears that the drain of paying for criminal defense attorneys is having an impact even on mega-plaintiffs lawyer Dickie Scruggs, whose share of fees from the late 1990s tobacco settlements is thought to have approached $1 billion.

Since September 2006, Scruggs had been paying all fees and expenses for two "whistleblowers" who had been sued by their employer due to actions they'd taken to assist Scruggs in his assault on MORE

Scruggs guilty plea - but will he cooperate?

The surprise guilty plea this morning of mega-tort lawyer Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs leaves a huge unanswered question: will Scruggs cooperate?

The unusually short plea agreement says nothing one way or the other about cooperation. (Scruggs' law partner Sid Backstrom also pled guilty today, and his specifies that he will cooperate. The Clarion-Ledger is reporting that Scruggs' son, David Zachary Scruggs, will get deferred prosecution, though he'll have to surrender his MORE

Scruggs may use stealth entrapment defense to bribery charge

Attorneys for famous plaintiffs lawyer Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs filed a battery of motions yesterday which suggest that he plans to try to invoke a variety of "entrapment" defense -- claiming, essentially, that the government unfairly lured him into commiting the crime -- without openly admitting that that's what he's doing. If a defendant invokes the entrapment defense openly, he becomes subject to a number of special obligations and MORE

State Farm v. AG Jim Hood: Wild suit, wild questions, wild ending

Yesterday morning, an extraordinary lawsuit -- in which State Farm had gone to Mississippi federal court to enjoin a Mississippi state criminal investigation of the insurer -- ended in an extraordinary way.

After Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood endured three hours of tough questioning by a State Farm attorney (who said, when court adjourned at 5 p.m., that he still had another hour left to go), attorneys for both sides huddled MORE

Plaintiff suing Scruggs offers clues, poses questions

Why would big-time plaintiffs lawyer Dickie Scruggs try to bribe a judge in a small-potatoes fee dispute? In an interview, the plaintiff in the case offered a conceivable answer to the most puzzling question posed by Scruggs's federal bribery indictment -- but he also posed some fresh riddles as well.

The plaintiff in the suit is John G. Jones, 52, or, more accurately, his law firm: Jones, Funderberg, Sessums, Peterson MORE