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The Fall of the House of Zeus

The Rise and Ruin of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
“Masterful . . . an epic tale of backbiting, shady deal-making, and greed [that] reads like a John Grisham novel.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
A real-life legal thriller as timeless as a Greek tragedy, tracing the downfall of one of America’s most famous lawyers and exposing the dark side of Southern politics—from the author of When Evil Lived in Laurel
 
Dickie Scruggs was arguably the most successful plaintiff’s lawyer in America. A brother-in-law of former U.S. Senate majority leader Trent Lott, Scruggs made a fortune taking on mass tort lawsuits against Big Tobacco and the asbestos industries. He was hailed by Newsweek as a latter-day Robin Hood and was portrayed in the movie The Insider as a dapper aviator-lawyer. Scruggs’s legal triumphs rewarded him lavishly, and his success emboldened both his career maneuvering and his influence in Southern politics—but at a terrible cost, culminating in his spectacular fall, when he was convicted for conspiring to bribe a Mississippi state judge.
 
Based on extensive interviews, transcripts, and FBI recordings never made public, The Fall of the House of Zeus uncovers the Washington legal games and power politics: the swirl of fixed cases, blocked investigations, judicial tampering, and a zealous prosecution that would eventually ensnare not only Scruggs but his own son, Zach, in the midst of their struggle with insurance companies over Hurricane Katrina damages.
 
Featuring Trent Lott and Jim Biden, brother of then-Senator Joe Biden, in supporting roles, with cameos by John McCain, Al Gore, and other Washington insiders, Curtis Wilkie’s account of this uniquely American tragedy reveals the seedy underbelly of institutional power.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 9, 2010
      Former Boston Globe reporter and Mississippian Wilkie charts the meteoric career of lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs in this riveting if labyrinthine account that in Wilkie's telling, involves treachery, professional jealousy, and zealous prosecution. Known as the "King of Torts," Scruggs had made a fortune with class action lawsuits involving asbestos claims in Pascagoula, Miss., and then tobacco lawsuits in the mid-1990s. But with fame and fortune came enemies in the small Mississippi world of law and politics, and also contact with what Scruggs once dubbed "the dark side of the Force," people who carried out business best done behind the scenes. In 2007, while handling a Katrina victims' class action suit against insurers, Scruggs and his associates asked someone to approach a judge in a case filed against Scruggs by a disgruntled former colleague. The intermediary offered the judge money. Scruggs himself was eventually indicted on bribery charges and after a contentious federal investigation pleaded guilty; he's serving a five-year sentence. Wilkie (Dixie) carefully tracks the maneuverings of Scruggs and his associates and enemies in a remarkable illustration of how far the mighty can fall.

    • Kirkus

      August 15, 2010

      Veteran journalist Wilkie (Journalism/Univ. of Mississippi; Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events that Shaped the Modern South, 2001, etc.) produces a meaty biography extolling the rise and fall of an infamously lucrative trial litigator.

      A 1976 graduate of the University of Mississippi Law School and former Navy pilot, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs' early career as a lawyer was jumpstarted when he began representing shipyard workers from his Pascagoula hometown who were diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer. The ensuing lawsuits against the culprits, asbestos manufacturers, netted both the claimants and Scruggs millions in the '80s. Fueled by cooperative whistleblowers and what he felt was a "lack of government regulation" on issues like tobacco, chemicals, physicians' malpractice and substandard automobile design, Scruggs became a hubris-laden champion to the "powerless masses," while concurrently becoming the target of angry politicians and corporate brass who lost constituents and corporate revenue. His co-involvement in prosecuting an array of tobacco companies "gave him an annual income projected at $20 million over a twenty-five-year period." Scruggs went on to successfully tackle insurance companies who denied claims in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, he also cultivated and heavily financed shady associations with state auditors and professional partnerships. His marriage to Diane Thompson, sister to the wife of republican Sen. Trent Lott, afforded Scruggs a familial alliance that would become elemental as political overlords began zeroing in on his increasingly hushed activities. These peripheral pressures may have accounted for the attorney's lack of proper judgment when his law firm was indicted and convicted of the bribery of a Mississippi state court judge twice, once in 2007 and again in 2009. Using data from print media, court transcripts, interviews, family meetings and from a particularly hard-won discussion with Scruggs' son and junior law partner, Zach, Wilkie charts his subject's serpentine legal and political machinations with dense, rich prose. While he honestly considers Scruggs "a friend," his chronicle is even-keeled and unbiased.

      Overlong but well-balanced.

      (COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

    • Library Journal

      November 15, 2010

      Well-known journalist Wilkie (Kelly G. Cook Chair in Journalism, Univ. of Mississippi) chronicles the rise and fall of Dickie Scruggs, a prominent Mississippi plaintiffs' attorney who was convicted of judicial bribery and sentenced to jail. As he followed Scruggs's career and downfall closely for local news outlets, Wilkie is able to trace and describe all details related to Scruggs's litigation, interactions with other legal professionals, successes, and failures. The book shows how easily a lawyer working within a close-knit circle of colleagues, prosecutors, judges, and politicians can easily slip into judicial misconduct while simply trying to represent the best interests of a client. The author is quick to point out how money, even when used in an indirect manner, can induce favoritism or influence a legal outcome, thus resulting in professional misconduct. VERDICT Written in the narrative style of a newspaper reporter, Wilkie's book is most suitable for a popular audience (and perhaps journalism students).--Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., First Judicial Dist., New York

      Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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