ATLANTA (Reuters) - A high-profile Mississippi lawyer, who became unpopular on Wall Street for battling powerful companies, pleaded guilty on Friday in a case in which he was accused of conspiring to bribe a judge.
By Matthew Bigg
ATLANTA (Reuters) - A high-profile Mississippi lawyer, who became unpopular on Wall Street for battling powerful companies, pleaded guilty on Friday in a case in which he was accused of conspiring to bribe a judge.
Richard "Dickie" Scruggs made many millions and became famous through landmark lawsuits against tobacco, pharmaceutical and construction companies. He also sued insurance companies after Hurricane Katrina.
The "defendant agrees to plead guilty under oath to count one of the indictment which charges conspiracy to corruptly influence a state circuit court judge," according to court documents.
!ADVERTISEMENT!Local media said Scruggs made the plea at a packed federal court in Oxford, Mississippi. He faces a possible five years in jail and a fine of $250,000. U.S. prosecutors dropped all other counts against him, the documents said.
The indictment said Scruggs and four co-conspirators planned to pay Circuit Judge Henry Lackey $50,000 to return a ruling favorable to the Scruggs Law Firm.
The case involved a lawsuit brought against the firm regarding the division of $26.5 million in attorney's fees in Katrina-related insurance litigation.
After the bribe offer in March 2007, Lackey reported the encounter to the FBI and cooperated with its investigation, the U.S. attorney's office said.
Scruggs' most famous lawsuit against tobacco companies formed the basis of a 1999 movie "The Insider."
Scruggs was a leader of a group of law firms that successfully sued major cigarette makers on behalf of U.S. states and won a landmark $206-billion settlement in 1998.
Legal fees ran into the billions. An arbitrator awarded $8 billion to the lawyers who worked on the lawsuits in Florida, Mississippi and Texas alone. Scruggs' firm got nearly $900 million of that.
Sidney Backstrom, a member of the same firm as Scruggs, also pleaded guilt to count one of the indictment -- conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States.
In Backstrom's case, the government agreed to recommend a sentence that would not exceed one half of the sentence imposed on Scruggs or 30 months in jail, the documents said.
(Additional reporting by Jim Loney; Editing by Bill Trott)
