In the Robertson brief, here’s the description of a Trailer Summit:
The meeting was held in a temporary housing unit due to the damage caused to so many structures by Katrina.
Temporary housing unit? How about “prefabricated improvisational dwelling”? What of “non-self-propelled mobile abode”? “Non-permanent omni-directional quarters”? The new brief goes to extreme and silly lengths to avoid calling things by their right names. How devastating can a response be when it’s afraid of the word “trailer”?
Look at this statement in the Robertson brief:
These are the facts: After the Rigsby’s completed the document protection exercise, they immediately informed State Farm that they had accessed the State Farm database and downloaded documents. They did not try to keep their actions secret. What is also true is that while the Rigsbys had access to the databases, they never improperly accessed or exceeded their access to these systems. Their counsel never used their computers or accessed their data base.
Let’s take a look at this stuff.
“Immediately informed State Farm.” it says. “Immediately” in this context does not refer to, as you might expect, immediately, but instead means “some months after they admittedly had begun engaging in covert spying on behalf of Dickie Scruggs.” As the November 20, 2007 deposition of Kerri Rigsby shows (page 140), the sisters fessed up only after they were ready to quit, after they realized that State Farm had just about figured out they were covertly funneling documents to Scruggs, and they did this only after they did a final frenzied “data dump” over the weekend, inviting some friends over to help them copy thousands of pages of claims files.
“Document protection exercise.” The Rigsbys agreed in testimony that they illicitly took the documents. Is it any use to try to come up with some Newspeak label? Question: when someone doesn’t dare call a trailer what it is, why should anyone buy this characterization of the Rigsbys’ secret taking of documents?
“They did not try to keep their actions secret.” Except up until the time they were going to be caught and then they took thousands of more pages secretly, staged a walk-out, and went over to Scruggs to be paid $150,000 a year.
“[T]hey never improperly accessed or exceeded their access to these systems.” Notice the word “access.” If you give me a key to your house to feed your fish while you’re on vacation and I go in and take your TV, did I exceed my access? Technically, no.
Insurance Coverage Blog
4/29/8
Magnolia Tribune
