- Starting with a quick note from Main Justice that makes me wonder why the powers that be seem hell-bent to appoint a new northern district Mississippi US Attorney with some connection to USA v Scruggs:
“U.S. Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.) confirmed to the paper that state Sen. Gray Tollison is in the running for the post. Tollison, a member of the state Senate since 1996, is chairman of the committee that considers changes to the state’s criminal laws. He is also the son of Oxford attorney and well known local Democrat Grady F. Tollison, according to the paper.”
Not that Gray isn’t a great guy but his father is not only well-know as a Democrat, the Tollison law firm represented John Jones in the lawsuit that became the undoing of Dick Scruggs as well as representing Jones in conjunction with McIntosh v State Farm, the centerpiece of the Rigsby Qui Tam case.
- Speaking of north Mississippi and USA v Scruggs, the “good neighbor” has shown up in federal court with more hubris than most can muster and a Motion for Return of Property. The “property” [sic] State Farm wants returned – any who wouldn’t – is any evidence of the Company’s wrongdoing in the Scruggs files held by DOJ!
Patsy Brumfield (NEMS360.com) had the story reporting, “In sworn testimony attached to its motion for return of property, two people say they remember seeing the report and a “sticky note” that court copies show has written on it, “Put in wind file – DO NOT Pay Bill. DO Not discuss.” (emphasis added)
One of those who remembers “seeing the report and a “sticky note” is none other than Lecky King, the State Farm employee who wrote the note (duh)! OMG, talk about “legal advocacy” that your mama wouldn’t buy. According to the Motion and Exhibits State Farm filed with the court, the other is Beth Jones – a claim refuted in the Rigsbys’ Response to a Motion State Farm filed in Southern District Mississippi Federal Court:
Jones actually testified that she had no idea whether she had ever seen the original Brian Ford report, did not know from where the sticky note she saw had come, did not know when the note arrived, and did not even know what the note said. In other words, the sum total the sum total of Jones’s testimony is that, at some point in her time with SLF, she saw a piece of paper with a sticky note on it. Yet State Farm attempts to use that testimony as a pretext for further rummaging through SLF’s files after the close of discovery.
- Next, while on the subject claims made in recent briefs filed in southern district Mississippi Federal Court – in this case, the Forensic Motion to Dismiss and Settlement Agreement. I ran across the Complaint from Bridgewater v State Farm that supports the need for more questions about the number of State Farm policyholders that had dual but differing engineering reports on cause of loss following Hurricane Katrina: Continue reading “SLABBED (sorta) Daily – All over the map: State Farm, DOJ, and BP (July 23, 2010)”