Scruggs Gets Contempt Prosecution Tossed
After repeated press accounts about charges that Richard “Dickie” Scruggs conspired to bribe a judge, the plaintiffs lawyer finally has some good news.
A federal judge on Friday tossed a criminal contempt charge against the lawyer for failing to return documents about State Farm’s Hurricane Katrina claims practices, the Associated Press reports. Two sisters who worked for a claims adjuster for the insurer had given Scruggs the documents, and he in turn gave them to Mississippi’s attorney general. Scruggs represented hundreds of Hurricane Katrina victims.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Pensacola, Fla., ruled (PDF posted by the Wall Street Journal Law Blog) that an Alabama court did not have jurisdiction to charge Scruggs because he wasn’t a party to a suit against the sisters there by the claims adjuster. Even if Scruggs was subject to the court’s jurisdiction, he could not be charged because he did not violate the terms of an injunction ordering the sisters to return the documents, the court said.
Vinson was hearing the case after federal district judges in northern Alabama granted Scruggs’ request for a change of venue in the case. Scruggs was indicted in November on charges he conspired to pay a judge up to $50,000 to resolve a fee dispute in favor of his law firm.
