When you’re the most prominent and powerful plaintiffs’ attorney in the land, winning hundreds of billions of dollars for your clients, you definitely qualify as a legend—or rather, a bogeyman who undoubtedly has haunted the dreams of many a carrier executive.
Richard “Dickie” Scruggs may now be serving time at a federal prison camp in Alabama for his role in bribing two Mississippi district court judges, but prior to his fall from grace he dominated courtrooms for decades, playing a significant role in not one, not two but three of the most important and costly civil disputes of all time: those revolving around assigning liabilities for tobacco, asbestos and Hurricane Katrina.
Indeed, following Katrina, Scruggs became a symbol of an affirmation of policy language—specifically a certain tongue-tying clause in homeowners’ policies used by plaintiffs’ attorneys to fuel misinterpretations and villainize insurers. Through his crusade against insurance companies, Scruggs ironically ended up cementing the very policy language he attempted to use as a weapon against insurers.
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