Insurance Law

Trailer Lawyer News: Who is Trailer Todd? Graves: I was with Goofy

By David Rossmiller

Is Todd Graves denying he is a Trailer Lawyer? In this story, he says he was at Disney World on March 11, 2006, the day of the first Trailer Lawyer meeting with the Rigsby Sisters and Dickie Scruggs.  Someone named Todd apparently was there, though, according to the Kerri Rigsby November 20, 2007 deposition.

However, according to the Cori Rigsby deposition of November 19, 2007, page 67, there were two Trailer Summits. The second meeting occurred in April 2006-- it's confirmed on page 182 of the November 20 Kerri Rigsby deposition, although it's not clear to me who was there. 

Graves seems most concerned with showing he was not at the Trailer Summit before he left office as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri on March 24, 2006, although to me it doesn't seem that important -- more significant is did he review the documents and did he know they were gained illicitly?  Did he sign on to the lawsuit knowing what the score was, and did he stay signed on to the lawsuit knowing what the score was? I don't think Graves gets a pass merely because he didn't access the State Farm server, as he claims, or that he may not have been present at the trailer when the Rigsbys used their passwords to gain access to the claims system for purposes of engaging in Scruggspionage.  It does not appear to me that he has ever denied being at the trailer at all, perhaps at the second meeting, and it appears to me he has merely denied accessing documents on State Farm's server, not that he unaware where they came from or how they were obtained.

Doesn't this seem odd to you? A former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court (Chip Robertson) and a former U.S. Attorney (Graves), implicated in some kind of tawdry trailer tryst involving documents that federal Judge Acker, in Alabama, has found were wrongly taken -- "stolen" is the word he has used.  Now, is there any justification for this? Does anyone really believe that a False Claims Act case entitles the relators and their lawyers to do whatever they want, that the rules don't apply to them?  Considering that the purpose of the Act is to address wrongful behavior toward the government, it would be strange indeed if the remedy for this included further unlawful or unethical behavior.  However, the Trailer Lawyers are supposed to be the experts on False Claims Act cases, not me.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

NOTE: I thought I published this early this morning, but apparently I hadn't.  It was sitting in my blog's admin basket until someone asked me if I intended to write anything for today.  

Full post as published by Insurance Coverage Law Blog on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).