From Counsel to Convict

Maybe they can pass the time playing bridge. A federal judge today sentenced a third big-name class action lawyer to prison, this one for trying to bribe a judge.

U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. ordered tobacco-lawsuit lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs for spend five years in federal prison -- and to pay for the cost of his own incarceration as well as a $250,000 fine. It was the maximum allowed.

His sentencing follows the imprisonment of two other high-profile plaintiffs' lawyers. William Lerach was sent away for two years in February and his partner Melvin Weiss received two-and-a-half years earlier this month for their roles in paying illegal kickbacks to people willing to hire their firm in lucrative class action suits against big corporations.

Scruggs, who made nearly $1 billion in legal fees in the landmark settlement with the nation's tobacco companies in 1998, had pleaded guilty in March to a charge of conspiracy.

The brother-in-law of Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican, Scruggs acknowledged that had conspired to bribe a state court judge to ensure a favorable ruling in a dispute over $26.5 million in legal fees stemming from lawsuits related to Hurricane Katrina.

The jurist Scruggs soliticted, Judge Henry Lackey, alerted the F.B.I. to the bribe offer and helped federal authorities record a conversation in which he asked a man working for Scruggs to pay $40,000 for a favorable ruling.

On the tape, according to transcripts filed in court, Balducci assured the judge, "There ain't another soul in the world that knows."

by Mark Stein