A Lawyer Like a Hurricane: Dickie Scruggs's house, featured in "The Insider," destroyed by Katrina

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: A Lawyer Like a Hurricane
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER
Published: March 16, 2007

PASCAGOULA, Miss. — Richard F. Scruggs, one of the country’s most successful trial lawyers, made his first fortune in a case that hit close to home. He sued asbestos makers on behalf of workers at the shipyard in his hometown, Pascagoula, who had developed lung diseases. He made his second fortune with lawsuits against the tobacco industry, coming up with a winning legal strategy in Mississippi that he then applied nationwide.

But his latest legal battle — trying to force insurers to pay more for damage from Hurricane Katrina — literally hit home.

His white-washed house on Beach Boulevard, just 50 yards from the Gulf of Mexico, is gone. The house, with its columned entrance and sunny breakfast room, appeared in the movie “The Insider,” about a whistle-blower who helped Mr. Scruggs win a $248 billion settlement in the tobacco case. It was so badly mangled that it had to be bulldozed to the foundation slab.

The loss made him a partner in grief with tens of thousands of residents along the coast of Mississippi. Many turned to him in their battle for insurance money in a fight that has become a financial and public relations nightmare for the insurance industry.

Mr. Scruggs, 60, slim, often folksy and smooth as molasses in court, is using techniques that he honed in his earlier legal fights. He is arguing now, as he did before to such good effect, that he is fighting for the little guy who cannot stand up alone to big anonymous companies.

“These are not just legal wars,” Mr. Scruggs said in a recent interview. “They are public relations and political wars.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/business/16scruggs.html

[aquart]

1. Good for him.

They took the premium money. They took it. Then they reneged. Screw 'em.