Kings of Tort

MS Digital Daily.com - ‘Kings of Tort’ an essential read

http://www.msdigitaldaily.com/3/Lifestyles/CAT5/Kings%20of%20Tort%20Review/1164/default.aspx
‘Kings of Tort’ an essential read

By STAFF REPORTS Joe Lee

Even if you’ve hardly followed Mississippi news and politics over the years, you’ll recognize most of the players in Kings of Tort (Pediment Publishing, 2009). Who hasn’t heard of Pascagoula native Richard F. “Dickie” Scruggs?

For people who describe themselves as “news junkies,” there aren’t that many surprises in this book. But you’ll remember where you were when the events within took place—you’ll at least remember marveling at the newspaper headlines over the years—as name after infamous name pops up and ties together a web of corruption that was decades in the making.

Jackson businessman and blogger Alan Lange (http://www.yallpolitics.com) and former federal prosecutor Tom Dawson have assembled, in chronological order, the events and background which led to the downfall of not only Scruggs and his son, Zack, but fellow attorneys Paul Minor, Tim Balducci, Joey Langston, former State auditor Steve Patterson, former Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters and former Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter, who successfully prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers.

Kings of Tort is a story that will make you sad, and mad. Mississippi, despite being last in many things, always leads or is among the states with the most charitable giving per capita. Those numbers are an indication that there are some very generous people in our midst.

There are also some very greedy ones, apparently. Kings of Tort will leave you a bit cynical when you hear trial attorneys talk of helping “the little guy.” It will make you wonder just how many judges out there can be bought off if the price is right.

Was Scruggs, who made untold millions suing the asbestos and tobacco industries, driven more by power than greed in the end? The sum of money that brought him down was a drop in the bucket, one might think. Or was it about absolute control of the judicial process, where he (and other like-minded attorneys) selected industries to filet, created outrage toward those industries, filed lawsuits, bought off judges, handpicked juries, and walked away with incredible sums of money after destroying large companies?

Not surprisingly, Scruggs and his early legal partners fought bitterly in the end over the terms in which they went into business. You might ask yourself why he didn’t settle with them—if so intent on continuing to amass his fortune—and get them out of his life. A few million dollars to Scruggs, at that point, would appear to have been chump change.

But to settle up with his estranged partners, perhaps, would have signaled surrender. It would have meant admitting defeat. That, based on the early picture one might get of Scruggs when reading Kings of Tort, just wasn’t part of the man’s vocabulary.

Kings of Tort is essential reading for those who follow our state’s legal system and have an interest in the way justice is administered. It not only brings together all of the major players in an easy-to-follow chronology, Lange and Dawson make it abundantly clear that the network of legal and judicial corruption in Mississippi ran very deep, like a huge oak with roots that spread far and wide beneath the surface.

Despite the prison sentences, revoked law licenses, and public disgrace for many of the men featured in Kings of Tort, it makes one wonder at what level this type of corruption continues in our state today…and if more high-profile indictments are to follow.

The authors will sign Kings of Tort at Lemuria in Jackson’s Banner Hall on Thursday, March 25 at 5 p.m.