“Tort King’s Path to Bribery Charge”. Wall Street Journal, Friday, 14 March 2008. Vol. CCLI No. 61. P.A1

I retrieved my WSJ from the mailbox this morning and was walking back to the office while looking over the front page stories. This article about good ole Dickie Scruggs caught my attention. The Journal poses the question “What could lead a lawyer who once earned nearly $1 billion on a single case, the tobacco litigation, to bribe a judge over a matter of a few million dollars?”

“The answer is simple—he didn’t—says Mr. Scruggs lawyer, John Keker. He says prosecutors have concocted a ‘manufactured crime’ in which his client had no part.”

Shortly after I got back to my office I got a news alert from the Journal saying Scruggs had pled guilty to a charge of conspiracy. Hmmm, doesn’t sound like he “had no part” in a “manufactured crime”. This, my friends, is why so many of us despise what has become of trial lawyers and favor tort reform.

Sure, there is need for lawyers to ensure everyone gets a fair trial. I happen to know several lawyers and have the greatest respect them—they are by all accounts fair, honest, and ethical. But then comes the Dickie Scruggs and his trial lawyer screaming innocence when there obviously is none, and the whole lot of them get a black eye.

Perhaps the trial lawyers will try to clean up their own profession. We can only hope.