Insurance Law

Scruggs Nation, May 27

By David Rossmiller

I know, I know, citizens of the Scruggs Nation, I know.  You will see this post and be stricken with nostalgia for the days of the 20,000-word Scruggs Nation posts, the ones that took me five hours to write, the days when the feds were rattling, the Scruggs was battling and Dickie's friends were skedaddling.  Time moves on, however, and we deal with the world as it is. 

Yes, you say, but you should at least headline this post with the Scruggs Lite designation, as it is not a full-blown employment of creative powers, not a worthy successor to the Scruggs Nation line.  And to that I say this: I considered this, but thought the headline might be misinterpreted as applying to the quality of the New Yorker article on Scruggs that I am going to talk about today.  And it is a fine story, so I would not wish to give this impression.

As you may recall, this story came out about the time I was headed to Florida and also when I hit a particularly nightmarish patch of extreme busyness, which continues in full force.  So I did not read the New Yorker article until Dunn Carney's marketing director, Marjory Morford, left a copy on my chair one day last week.  Although I am a subscriber, I couldn't find that issue at home, which is not entirely surprising -- I have a 4-year-old daughter who likes those little subscription cards that fall out of the magazine when you open it, and she may have walked off with it and hidden it in her private library, wherever that happens to be at the time.

Here is a link to the story.  As yet, it is still only in abstract form on the website, so you can't read the full text at the link. My reaction? My first reaction was that it could have been called "Best of Dickie Scruggs," or "Scruggs' Greatest Hits."  I don't mean to imply it was pro-Scruggs, certainly not in the sense of the adoring press coverage Scruggs received a year or two ago -- it was an even-handed, fair story.  It was a very good overview, caught a lot of the great details.  (But I would have liked to see some more of the Falstaffian Jim Hood in there, and at least some mention of the Trailer Lawyers). However, despite the article's length, I did not learn much about the why of it all, I would have preferred an article that could have been called the Psychology of Pscruggs.   

The story also bought into the Balducci Wannabe theory, which has some attractive elements to it, but is one that I ultimately reject because it suggests Balducci, not Scruggs, was primarily to blame. If this theory has any validity, I think it comes only as a subtext to the main irony -- Balducci was not in fact the prime mover, he was merely an opportunistic agent operating under parameters and precedent that had been set by Scruggs.  The Wannabe theory tends to show Scruggs in the light of a victim, but he is not -- he is a victim only in the sense that someone who steps on his own landmine after forgetting where he buried it is a victim. 

Also, the story characterizes the Rigsby sisters as being fired.  This has been disputed in legal proceedings, but in my view, they in essence quit or fired themselves.  They did the data dump, illicitly copying thousands of pages of confidential documents, then walked in and announced it, hoping to provoke some big scene where they could look like martyrs.  Instead, they were treated quite courteously, apparently to their disappointment.  At that point, one should note, they had already come to an agreement where they would work for Pscruggs as "sham" consultants, as Judge Senter put it.  One of the story's biggest disappointments was that it gave short shrift to characters in the plot like Hood and the Rigsby sisters.  Looking more closely at them would have done a lot to explain more about how Dickie Scruggs' brain works.  In other words, my approach: the Katrina Follies.  It would have been better than the extensive quotes about him -- those are interesting, but they are merely what people say, and quickly the quotes started looking like this to me: "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." More showing, less telling would have been welcome.  

Still, I don't want to be too critical of the story.  Not everyone has followed the Pscruggs Psaga closely, and even a Greatest Hits type of story must come as quite a shocker to many first-time readers or casual observers.  But, I do have to say, the definitive Scruggs Story has yet to be written.

Also, one last point.  You know what the story really needed?  I know that you do.  A song!  The story even mentioned that dopey quote by Scruggs about how he was so poor growing up, if he wouldn't have been a boy he "wouldn't have had anything to play with."  This quote, of course, is the basis for one of the great numbers in my upcoming musical, The Katrina Follies, entitled "Dickie's Got A Magic Jurisdiction." 

Full post as published by Insurance Coverage Law Blog on May 27, 2008 (boomark / email).