Claims News Service, June 20, 2:15 p.m. EDT — A new legal motion filed yesterday by State Farm seeks to remove and disqualify famed attorney Richard Scruggs from representing Mississippi policyholders who are disputing Katrina claim payments with the company.

The action stems from initial information the Scruggs Katrina Group received from independent claim adjusters Cori and Kerri Rigsby back in Feb. 2006. According to the motion from State Farm, Scruggs illegally and unethically obtained the confidential information from the two sisters, and then gave them both litigation consulting jobs at the firm that paid them each $150,000 a year.

To bolster its case, State Farm retained professional responsibility and ethics professor Charles Wolfram as an expert witness to review the evidence. In the legal motion, Prof. Wolfram states, "Scruggs blatantly, seriously, and repeatedly departed from the standard of conduct that would be followed by a lawyer of ordinary care and prudence in dealing with clearly confidential and privileged information possessed by the Rigsby Sisters as former confidential agents of State Farm."