Nowdy has been doing PACER searches for a couple of weeks now and her findings are born out in Anita Lee’s report from the Saturday Sun Herald. Insurance industry bloggers predicting the demise of these cases were a wee bit premature with their prognostications.
…..The Scruggs Katrina Group, reincarnated as the Katrina Litigation Group, was disqualified in April from representing policyholders in 180 lawsuits SKG filed against State Farm. Judge L.T. Senter Jr. ruled then the member law firms knew or should have known Scruggs unethically paid two former insurance adjusters who were potential witnesses in some of the cases.
The Texas law firm Provost Humphrey, recommended by SKG lead attorney Don Barrett, wound up with 62 percent of the 112 cases in which policyholders retained new attorneys, with Coast attorneys taking on the remainder.
The U.S. District Court sent to mediation 36 cases in which policyholders had failed to hire new attorneys. Of those cases 16 settled in mediation and 12 before mediation. One failed to settle and is still pending; six were dismissed, either because the policyholders failed to appear or decided against participating.