Legal Pad

Tumult builds over alleged 'Lose your home, lose your vote' scheme

Not since the Reagan administration allegedly classified ketchup as a vegetable to save money on the federal school-lunch program, have the Democrats found such a potent symbol of Republican callousness. But Republicans insist that this latest purported gaffe is a complete fabrication.

As many blogs have reported, the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have sued the Macomb County (Michigan) Republican Party, the Michigan Republican Party and Republican National Committee MORE

Lerach doing harder time; plus beautiful lawyers

For people looking for distractions from the fact that their 401k's have recently vanished, here are a couple odds and ends.

Dan Levine at Cal Law's Legal Pad (no affiliation to this site and, mea culpa, they were apparently using the Legal Pad name first) has this update on class-action impresario Bill Lerach's rocky adjustment to life in the federal prison system. Lerach's been transferred to a medium-security institution in Phoenix, MORE

Lerach doing harder time; plus beautiful lawyers

For people looking for distractions from the fact that their 401k's have recently vanished, here are a couple odds and ends.

Dan Levine at Cal Law's Legal Pad (no affiliation to this site and, mea culpa, they were apparently using the Legal Pad name first) has this update on class-action impresario Bill Lerach's rocky adjustment to life in the federal prison system. Lerach's been transferred to a medium-security institution in Phoenix, MORE

Lehman: stress test for bankruptcy laws

With this morning's Chapter 11 filing by Lehman Brothers' parent company (LEH), we're about to find out whether the bankruptcy laws cushion the impact of a behemoth investment bank's insolvency on our financial system -- as intended -- or if those laws, instead, inadvertently exacerbate the problem. The rules have never been tested as they're about to be.

"I think it's a really scary time right now," says Ed Morrison, a MORE

Legal paper: Lerach in ad seg

I don't usually do pure "aggregation" type referrals on this column/blog, but I'll make an exception this morning. In the character-is-destiny department, people may not want to miss today's update in The Recorder (a San Francisco-based daily affiliated with The American Lawyer) about erstwhile class-action impresario Bill Lerach, who is now, of course, imprisoned at the U.S. Penitentiary in Lompoc, California. The Recorder reports that Lerach was sent to administrative MORE

Legal paper: Lerach in ad seg

I don't usually do pure "aggregation" type referrals on this column/blog, but I'll make an exception this morning. In the character-is-destiny department, people may not want to miss today's update in The Recorder (a San Francisco-based daily affiliated with The American Lawyer) about erstwhile class-action impresario Bill Lerach, who is now, of course, imprisoned at the U.S. Penitentiary in Lompoc, California. The Recorder reports that Lerach was sent to administrative MORE

State Farm v. Scruggs updates (Introduction)

With former super-lawyer Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs now serving a federal prison term for conspiring to bribe one state judge, and a federal grand jury reportedly looking into whether he conspired to bribe a second one (see also here), State Farm's lawyers have been relentlessly pursuing a parallel crusade to expose and civilly punish Scruggs for a long laundry list of other alleged wrongdoing.

State Farm's accusations stem from how Scruggs MORE

Scruggs updates, Part I: Key witness will finally testify

[This part of a series. See the introduction here.]

In a little noted filinglast week State Farm revealed that one of its claims-adjusting supervisors, Alexis ("Lecky") King, is now available to testify in a handful of Hurricane Katrina-related civil suits that are still being waged against the insurer by plaintiffs originally represented by Dickie Scruggs.

Though King's name may still be unfamiliar to many, she was a pivotal figure in Scruggs' post-Hurricane MORE

Scruggs update, Part II: When Kerri met Dickie

[This is part of a series. The introduction is here.]

The Rigsbys and Scruggs have always portrayed the Rigsbys' secret photocopying of confidential State Farm documents (in arguable violation of confidentiality clauses in their contracts) as having been self-initiated, rather than directed by Scruggs. While it would probably be illegal for Scruggs to have directed the Rigsbys to use their inside position to collect confidential State Farm documents, it may have MORE

Scruggs updates, Part III: Was there a third insider?

[This is part of a series. The introduction is here.]

The newly available Tammy Hardison and Dana Lee depositions also shed light on an arcane question that I have posted on before, and that State Farm has been aggressively trying to answer: was there a third insider? The question stems from an isolated interview Scruggs gave to a Bloomberg reporter on March 30, 2006, in which he claimed to have made MORE