‘Kings of Tort’

By Alan Lange and Tom Dawson

Pediment Publishing

Release date: Dec. 2

288 pages, $19.95

www.kingsoftort.com

For the rest of the world, which hasn’t hung on every legal moan connected with the judicial scandals surrounding former Mississippi mega-lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, a new book will offer the history and details on his fall from grace.

“Kings of Tort,” set for release Dec. 2, comes from political blogger Alan Lange of Jackson and retired assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Dawson of Oxford.

Dawson was the lead prosecutor in the first indictment against Scruggs and others for the 2007 attempted bribery of Circuit Judge Henry Lackey of Calhoun City.

The book is no sexy read and it’s hardly suspenseful, although each chapter ends with a kind of cheesy cliff-hanger sentence like “And little did Scruggs know he was about to lose it all.”

But, if it is accurate, it is a handy look at Scruggs’ life, his most public litigations and his eventual downfall.

Lange and Dawson are quick to insist they did their homework and pulled from public documents and myriad of interviews with many of the players. They asked but were denied access to the main cast, however.

I say, “if it is accurate,” because when you see a couple of glaring errors, it’s hard to be sure there aren’t others not so obvious.

For example, on Page 18, they have Scruggs’ law partner and co-defendant, Sid Backstrom, quoted as saying, “for over the last five or six years there are bodies buried ... that (Dickie Scruggs) and I know where.” Backstrom did not say this – it was co-defendant, turned informant Timothy Balducci who said this to Lackey.

And later, when they talk about Mike Moore, a longtime Scruggs ally and former state attorney general, they call him one of the “Boys of Summer” who surrounded Gov. William Winter after his 1979 election. This group of young advisers was known as the “Boys of Spring” and Moore never was one of them.

Lange says he began collecting Scruggs information on his Web site, Y’allPolitics.com, and didn’t think about a book until the beginning of 2009. He reached out to Dawson after his retirement a few months later.

They insist Dawson broached no ethical rules with his involvement, which has been raised in some quarters. And they quote a Department of Justice spokeswoman, Melissa Schwartz, who said his participation in the book “did not take place until after his direct and contract employment” ended.

They also insist they are not financially backed by anti-lawyer organizations, the Republican Party or Big Insurance. Their publisher backs them up.

Regardless, it was quite a turnaround to collect all the documents and weave a coherent story outlining Scruggs’ background and fortuitous entry into the asbestos lawsuit business in the early 1980s.

They tell the story of the Mississippi legal community’s “judgemaker” powers and how that played through the careers and downfalls of Scruggs and others who often were his legal associates.

Perhaps the most interesting few sentences in the book look at Balducci’s Sept. 27, 2007, delivery of bribe money to Lackey, who was working with the FBI. The handover gave the elderly jurist such an irregular heart beat that his defibrillator activated. Lackey later said he felt like he’d been kicked by a mule.

Dawson says he felt it was important to have “a historical record of what actually happened from Day 1” of Scruggs’ criminal investigation and prosecution.

“I lived it – I wanted to write it down,” he said.

Lange said the book is a chronology, not an opinion piece, especially about players like former Sen. Trent Lott, who was interviewed by the FBI and subpoenaed for a trial that never developed surrounding the alleged bribery of then-Hinds Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter.

They also bring up issues for further consideration by others:

• The alleged lawyers’ game of “shirts and skins,” in which colleagues choose sides in a legal dispute and work it long and hard, then bring in a third colleague to “mediate.” The result: Nothing but legal fees.

• Why they say Oxford FBI chief Hal Neilsen wasn’t trusted to such a degree the feds went to Jackson for investigators. Neither Neilsen nor his attorney returned Daily Journal phone calls for comment.

• If any charges will be brought against longtime Scruggs “handyman” P.L. Blake, whose shadow lingers over much of the background politics and skullduggery the authors say Scruggs manipulated to his advantage for many years.

As Lange says, they just wanted to “put all this in context,” show how the pieces fit and let the readers draw their own conclusions.

Contact Patsy R. Brumfield at (662) 678-1596 or patsy.brumfield@djournal.com.