The Insurance Coverage Blog, 4/5/8
Regarding yesterday’s news of the disqualification from Katrina cases of the Katrina Litigation Group, the entity derived from the former Scruggs Katrina Group and containing three of the original five firms, what will happen now? It’s hard to overstate how big a development in Katrina litigation this is. Remember as we discuss this ruling that, in addition to disqualifying the remaining KLG firms from Katrina litigation in the Southern District of Mississippi, he barred the Rigsby sisters as witnesses and also barred the use of the documents taken from State Farm. A huge development.
One thing we should expect is a motion in the False Claims Act case, Ex rel. Rigsby, which is also in the Southern District. That motion, I would expect, would be to dismiss the case entirely, because it is founded on the stolen documents — in that the government has not intervened in the lawsuit, it is nothing more than an ordinary lawsuit, and the same arguments would apply to it as to the McIntosh case where Judge Senter issued the disqualification order. If the Rigsby documents can’t be used in any of the KLG cases in the Southern District, why should they be able to be used in the False Claims Act case?
Magnolia Tribune
