This week, former Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters turned in his license to practice law. This came as a result of his involvement in the wake of of fraud and deceit put into action by now disbarred super plaintiff's attorney Dickie Scruggs. As you may be aware, Dickie, his son Zach, Joey Langston, and other lawyers connected to and/or involved with Dickie Scruggs have been arrested and most have pled to federal charges. Ed Peters has not been arrested, and may not be. Additionally, current Circuit Court Judge Bobby Delaughter has been suspended indefinitely from his job while the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance investigates allegations that Peters influenced him to make decisions favoring Scruggs. Most of these tales of corruption involve greed and the attempt to get even more money. The thing that strikes me the most about the Peters/Delaughter matter is that money was not at the genesis of it, or at least not at the heart of the main player, Dickie Scruggs. Pure unadulterated hubris was the motivation.
Hubris can be defined as "exaggerated pride or self-confidence; arrogance". The story as it is generally told is that Scruggs promised Langston, Peters and non-lawyer Steve Patterson that they could split the $3 million Scruggs would not have to pay if they prevailed. In other words, Scruggs just wanted to win his case against the attorney who was suing him for a fair share of attorneys fees in a case both firms worked. He did not care about saving money. Scruggs was going to pay the $3 million, but just did not want to pay it to that attorney. In other words, he wanted to win more than he wanted to put money in his pocket. I feel sure he could approached the Plaintiff/other attorney about settling the case, and maybe paid half of that. He could have paid $.95 on the dollar and still had money in his pocket.
But he wanted to win and prevail more than he wanted to have the money. Granted, greed motivated the three who got the favorable ruling in the case. But the main player, Dickie Scruggs, was not making decisions based upon financial self-interest. Of course, he was a multimillionaire, and didn't need the money. But how simple it would have been to settle the case and move on with your life. He could've continued in his law practice, and these other attorneys maybe would not have been tempted by the lure of easy money and might be practicing still.
It is a degree of self-importance and arrogance that I cannot even begin to comprehend. While I'm sure that ego was an important tool for Scruggs in taking on the many giants that he took on and slayed, and therefore was necessary to his hight stakes practice, at some point in time you have to realize that we are all just frail vessels in the scheme of things, and quite frankly, as put to me by an armchair philosopher, there are literally billions of people in China who don't give a greasy damn about what we are doing today.
This episode, of course, is staining the entire legal profession in this state. All the good things that these individuals have done will be forgotten. Scruggs, in addition to helping thousands of clients obtain (in other cases) what was rightfully due them in suits against giant corporations, has given much money to charity. Joey Langston provided his home town police force with bulletproof vests. Ed Peters was an instrumental player in the long overdue prosecution of Medar Evers' killer. They will not be remembered for any of these good things. And that is the naked destructive power of hubris at work.
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I'm going to disagree somewhat with your point.
Hubris was involved, but at bottom it really was greed. Wilson had a separate federal court action for a constructive trust, in which he was arguing that Scruggs had used the asbestos fees owed Wilson (which were the subject of the case before DeLaughter) had been used by Scruggs to fund the tobacco litigation.
If Wilson got actual damages in the case before DeLaughter, it fueled his claim for the constructive trust on the tobacco fees.
Second, DeLaughter made a (corrupt and wrong) ruling that if Scruggs owed no actual damages, Wilson did not get to go to a jury on punitive damages-- even though the only reason he owed no actual damages was that he'd paid up the money (like $6M) within a year before the trial setting, over ten years after it was due. So by zeroing out the actuals, DeLaughter took away the exposure for punitives, at least without Wilson taking another trip to the Supreme Court.
I don't fully understand the logic that caused Wilson to abandon the effort to use the $6M that was paid to fuel the constructive trust case, except that a sealed settlement occurred. I assume that all of this will become at least somewhat clearer as Scruggs II cranks up.
I write about much of this stuff on the blog www.folo.us.
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