The Tortellini

Hillary Clinton Says Bye-Bye to Indicted Trial Lawyer

Bad news for trial lawyers, and bad news for Bill and Hillary, too. Famed Mississippi plaintiff's lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, who was slated to host a Clinton fundraiser next month, was indicted yesterday for allegedly trying to bribe a state court judge. The indictment comes a day after the FBI raided his office looking for a document, and two days after Scruggs' brother-in-law, Trent Lott, announced his resignation from the Senate.

When the FBI first raided Scruggs' office, Lott said the timing of his resignation was just a coincidence. But you do have to wonder. The indictment is pretty damning, and includes apparently taped conversations between the judge and some of the other lawyers involved in the alleged scheme.

The indictment will no doubt have other political fallout. Scruggs is a high-profile figure, having just used his private jet to ferry the new University of Mississippi football coach to Oxford hours before turning himself in to law enforcement authorities. He made millions off the state's lawsuit against the tobacco companies in the 1990s and has been leading the litigation against insurance companies over denied Katrina claims, including Lott's. Scruggs has been a generous Democratic political donor, particularly in Mississippi, where he used some of his tobacco winnings to found a now-defunct PAC to help elect liberal candidates to state office.

But his political loyalties have always been a little suspect, and not just because of his in-law status. This year, for instance, he has given nearly $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and several thousand dollars to Joe Biden. But he's also contributed to Republican John McCain. Next month, Bill Clinton was scheduled to headline a fundraiser for his wife at Scruggs' Oxford home. Not surprisingly, today a Clinton spokesman tells Mother Jones that the event is "not happening."

Cross-posted from MoJoBlog

Trial Lawyers Still the Democrats' Deep Pockets

Cross-Posted from Mother Jones:

Lots of corporate money is making an exodus from the GOP and resurfacing in various Democratic campaign coffers this year. Yet there's still plenty of evidence that the Democratic presidential candidates are going to rely heavily on trial lawyer funding, even with a few of the old reliables either in jail, under indictment or facing other criminal charges.

The latest report comes from Mississippi, where Bill Clinton will headline a fundraiser at the home of Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, trial lawyer extrordinare and, incidentally, Trent Lott's brother-in-law. Scruggs is best known for his role in initiating the tobacco litigation in the 1990s that led to an enormous settlement between the states and the cigarette companies. The litigation also netted Scruggs several billion in legal fees and a Hollywood portrayal in the movie "The Insider."

But Scruggs is in a spot of trouble these days. He's facing criminal contempt of court charges in Alabama for allegedly violating a protective order in a case involving Katrina-related insurance claims. Apparently, though, the charges aren't serious enough to scuttle the Clinton fundraiser. No word yet on whether Scruggs' friend and fellow Mississippi trial lawyer John Grisham will make an appearance, but no doubt he's on the invite list. Last year, Grisham gave the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee nearly $27,000, and the former Mississippi state legislator was active in Democratic politics long before he was a bestselling author....

And this is only what they admit to doing!

From the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog today: New research suggests lawyers who work by billable hours (i.e., most defense lawyers)  routinely pad their bills and unethically double-bill clients. I will be waiting with baited breath for Cardozo law prof and Manhattan Institute ethics "expert" Lester Brickman, who never misses a chance to bash plaintiff lawyers for alleged contingency fee abuses, to express outrage over this..

Trial laywers on the offensive, still a little off the mark

Over the past year, the nation's trial lawyers have reorganized themselves, with new leadership drawn from professional PR quarters, and a new focus-grouped moniker--all, one suspects, at great cost. The changes are evident in the group's newly prolific (and occasionally shrill) press releases, which reflect the lawyers' desire to go on the offensive against attacks on the civil justice system. From what I've seen so far, I'm not sure the lawyers are getting their money's worth. Their communications strategy still seems like the product of people who are a little tone deaf.

It's such an odd phenomenon. Trial lawyers, who are unparalleled in their ability to connect with average people who sit in jury boxes, are among the most ham-handed professionals when it comes to PR. (Recall attorney Mark Lanier's comment that he'd "be lucky to get 10 percent" of a $26 million verdict in a Texas Vioxx case.) Even the stuff they've paid PR geniuses to concoct reflects some critical misunderstanding of public perception.

A few years ago, I saw consultant Ed Lazarus unveil a host of talking points and sound bites for the group's "Seventh Amendment" project that were all phrased around preserving the "right to a jury trial." No one in the room seemed to notice that the anti-tort reform slogans sounded like they were describing criminal trials, not civil ones. The trial lawyers' message problems are still evident today. Witness yesterday's press release.

In criticizing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's newly-issued ranking of state legal climates , AAJ offered up its corollary, a "top 10" list of the worst places to get injured. In theory, this could be a clever and newsworthy item. Instead, AAJ issued a catalog of the limits of legal remedies in various states, with language like this:

Alabama law limits restitution for every injury or death caused by the government to what’s available under workers comp. If a local governmental entity is held responsible, no matter how great the loss, restitution is limited to $100,000 per person for injury or death, or  300,000 if more than one person is injured or killed in the same incident – no matter how many people were affected.

I suspect this kind of thing isn't likely to outrage anyone but trial lawyers. That's because for most Americans, $100,000 is a shit-load of money. The median household income in the U.S. is $46,000. In 2001, half of all American workers under 70 had $2,000 or less in a retirement account. So laws that limit damages to six figures (or seven, in some cases on the list), aren't going to strike many people as especially unfair. Maybe the lawyers need to find a better focus group....

Is Willie Gary Worth $11,000 an hour?

I imagine that Lester Brickman is having a heyday with this one...And trial lawyers wonder why they have a PR problem?

NY Law Review on Plaintiffs' Bar

The New York Law School law review this month is devoted to the plaintiffs' bar and includes a series of articles dealing with the impact of tort reform on legal practice (notably in Texas). Check out, too, this one, if only for the catchy headline (hint: disco tunes feature prominently).

Dickie Scruggs: Witness for the Prosecution

Looks like the famous Mississippi trial lawyer, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, will be appearing this week in a Jackson federal courtroom, not as a lawyer but as a witness for federal prosecutors. Scruggs, best known for his role in orchestrating the state tobacco litigation that brought the cigarette industry to its knees, at least for a while, and for his current role in suing insurance companies over Hurricane Katrina claims, has been given immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony in the bribery trial of his former colleague Paul Minor and two other state court judges.

Scruggs wasn't called in the first trial in which Minor and the judges were acquitted of several of the charges, but he's expected to appear this go around. In theory, his testimony should be interesting, as there were allegations during the first trial that Scruggs was intimately involved in the transactions at the heart of the Minor trial. His personal secretary "supplied a bag of cash" to the now ex-wife of a state court judge running for reelection, according to the woman's interview with FBI agents a few years back, and allegedly Scruggs was trying to round up people willing to serve as "donors" for the money to the judicial campaign.

None of this was ever proved or even elaborated on in the first trial, as Scruggs wasn't prosecuted, and bringing it up would have allowed Minor to argue, as he had in earlier filings, that he was being selectively prosecuted. Scruggs is Republican Senator Trent Lott's brother-in-law and he occasionally gives money to Republicans. But Scruggs is a smart lawyer, and my guess is even if they put him on the stand, he won't have much to say...

John Edwards Finally Escapes Trial Lawyer Label

I know presidential contender John Edwards has been working hard to get the media to drop "former trial lawyer" from his name. Unfortunately, I think he has officially succeeded, but of course, I doubt very much that this was what he was looking for...

No Amount of Trial Lawyer PR Will Help With This One

Since my book came out, people who oppose tort reform or interviewers occasionally ask me why I think that the movement to restrict people's right to sue has been so successful. One reason I always give them is that trial lawyers, despite all their recent name changes and focus groups, still continue to provide the "reformers" with a lot of solid material. Check out the latest in the Wall Street Journal today ($) here or the WSJ law blog item here...

John Edwards Watch

So now that John Edwards is no longer the favored presidential candidate of trial lawyers, I'm wondering if he will be even bolder this go-around in dissing his former professional colleagues to prove his "independence." In 2004, he feigned some interest in tort reform, writing a lame op-ed in the Washington Post offering a meaningless proposal for cracking down on frivolous lawsuits. And, of course, during the second presidential debate in 2004, his running mate declared that "John Edwards and I support tort reform." But now that Edwards isn't quite so reliant on trial lawyer money for his campaign, he doesn't have to be as careful about pissing them off, either. As he tries to shed the moniker "former trial lawyer," I wouldn't be surprised to see Edwards embrace some of the more draconian tort reform proposals out there to show he's not beholden to the plaintiffs' bar, kinda the way Clinton did in executing that retarded man in Arkansas or passing welfare reform legislation to prove he wasn't a bleeding heart. We'll see...