Lawyer denies infiltrating State Farm database
A team of plaintiffs lawyers that includes a former high-ranking federal prosecutor denies infiltrating an insurance company’s computer database to help build a case against the insurer after Hurricane Katrina.
State Farm spokesman Phil Supple said Monday the company was “still reviewing the ten documents filed today by the Rigsby sisters and their counsel.”
As for claims the insurer has mislead the court about alleged misconduct by the Rigsby sisters and their attorneys, Supple said: “We would suggest Rigsbys’ counsel review the actual sworn deposition testimony of their own clients.”
State Farm claims Todd Graves, the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, was present at a meeting in Pascagoula in 2006 in which the Rigsby sisters used a laptop to access State Farm databases.
The motion filed Monday says Graves did no such thing.
“Mr. Graves did not use any laptop computer during this meeting or any other meeting with the Rigsbys, and does not recall a laptop computer being used by anyone else,” the motion said. “There simply is nothing to show (Graves Bartle & Marcus) violated any ethical rules in any manner.”
The firm of Bartimus, Frickleton, Robertson & Gorny said in a motion filed Monday that it should be allowed to remain the sisters’ counsel, in part, because it was never associated with the Scruggs Katrina Group or the Katrina Litigation Group.
The firm said it hopes the court “will judge the conduct of the attorneys accused here by State Farm according to those facts and the applicable law, and will render a decision on matters relating to disqualification that will reflect the facts of this matter, not guilt by distant and uninformed association.”
Sun Herald
4/29/8
