Scruggs, 61, was born in modest circumstances in Brookhaven, Miss. After serving as a fighter pilot in the Navy, he earned a law degree from the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
In his first significant case, he represented shipyard workers who had been exposed to asbestos. Scruggs earned millions from asbestos litigation. But it was his assault on Big Tobacco in the 1990s that made him famous. Scruggs orchestrated one of the largest civil settlements in American history, winning nearly $250 billion from the industry. The fees awarded to the plaintiffs' lawyers came to more than $13 billion. Scruggs' share of the pot was at the very least in the hundreds of millions.
There are cases that make lawyers' careers, but this was something more. It made Scruggs a star in the legal world and a character in "The Insider," a 1999 movie about the tobacco litigation.
Former Mississippi Atty. Gen. Mike Moore, who worked closely with Scruggs on the tobacco cases, said the disgraced lawyer had done a tremendous amount of good for public health.
"Today's events don't change that a bit," Moore said. "He's a very good man who made a mistake he'll pay for the rest of his life."
But Scruggs also left a trail of critics.
David Rossmiller, an attorney in Portland, Ore., whose Insurance Coverage Law Blog has focused on Scruggs' recent troubles, found it unsettling that the tobacco litigation relied in part on an insider who took company documents.
Other attorneys who worked with Scruggs alleged that he shortchanged them on fees.
Today, Mississippians are wondering what effect Scruggs' guilty plea will have on homeowners' remaining cases against State Farm, in which millions of dollars is potentially at stake.
Rossmiller thinks the insurance giant will benefit.
"It affects the potential jury pool for a civil case, whether anybody wants to admit that or not," he said.
After the guilty plea was announced, Aaron Condon, a law professor emeritus at Ole Miss, could not help feeling sad as he drove past the music hall named after his former student.
"It's like every other great tragedy where the hero turned out to have feet of clay," Condon said. "I would never have thought that he would be so lacking in judgment as to risk his career and his future like this."
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richard.fausset@latimes.com
jenny.jarvie@latimes.com
henry.weinstein@latimes.com
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Fausset and Jarvie reported from Atlanta, Weinstein from Los Angeles.
