Kings of Tort

Mississippi Business Journal reviews Kings of Tort

From 2007 to early 2009, dozens of reporters from the newsrooms of the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the New York Times and many other print and TV organizations traveled to Mississippi for a front-row look at the squalid underbelly of the state’s legal system. Once again, the Magnolia State was dragged into another headline grabbing scandal that was kicked off in its own backyard.

“Kings of Tort,” which hit bookstore shelves Dec. 2, recounts the fast and furious rise and fall of high-profile trial lawyers Richard “Dickie” Scruggs and Paul Minor including the judicial bribery conspiracy that sent both men to federal prison. The 255-page book, penned by Y’allPolitics.com editor Alan Lange and recently retired assistant U.S. attorney Tom Dawson, is billed as “the first and definitive work” that documents the investigations and trials that brought these courtroom giants and many of their cronies to humiliating downfalls.

Lange said that his interest in writing a book about the conspiracy was born out of a desire to break down every intricate detail and offer up a fresh play-by-play account of the events for both the reader and for the historical record. “A lot of what you read about Scruggs or Minor was in a few column inches or TV packages at a time,” Lange said. “No one else would put the history of this together.”