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September 5, 2008 11:16:24 PM CDT

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Storied Miss. Lawyer Indicted, Still Partying

Posted Dec 4, 07 4:35 PM CST in Gossip,  Crime & Courts,  Arts & Living 

(Newser) – As he greeted party guests, Richard “Dickie” Scruggs—the trial lawyer famous for taking down Big Tobacco and taking on Katrina insurance companies—didn’t look like someone who had just been indicted. And though prosecutors say he conspired to bribe the judge in his latest case, Oxford, Miss., isn't buying it. The Wall Street Journal pays a visit.

“That doesn't sound like the Dickie Scruggs that I know,” pal John Grisham says of Trent Lott's brother-in-law, who brought the state millions in a tobacco lawsuit and sealed his crusader image fighting insurance companies after Katrina. But of the man who paid the judge, “This is a clear case of a young man wanting to endear himself to Dickie Scruggs,” says another.

Source Wall Street Journal

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Attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs leaves the federal courthouse in Oxford, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007, after being indicted by a federal grand jury on criminal charges that he and other lawyers engaged...   (Associated Press)
Richard "Dickie" Scruggs is shown April 19, 2006, at his office in Moss Point, Miss. Scruggs has carefully crafted an image as a country lawyer who relishes representing the underdog in David-and-Goliath...   (Associated Press)
Author John Grisham poses for a photograph in New York, in this Oct. 10, 2006 file photo. Grisham is a good friend of Scruggs, and doesn't believe the allegations against him. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg,...   (Associated Press)
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Hurricane Katrina  • Mississippi  • Trent Lott  • bribe  • Dickie Scruggs  • University of Mississippi  • John Grisham


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