Scruggs testifying about P.L. Blake in 2005
Q Now, who’s DMG, Mr. Scruggs?
A I think that stands for Developing Markets Group or something to that effect.
Q Who are they?
A I think — I may be wrong, but I think it’s Mr. Blake, but it could be Tom Anderson. I just don’t know as I sit here now. Maybe you can show me something that will refresh my memory. It’s one of the two of them, I think.
Q Let’s look at it. It says (reading:)
::As we discussed earlier today, the new payment to DMG will be 468,450 each quarter, an increase of 218,450 per quarter. This is based on the increase in fees from the base of 1.57 to 2.95 billion or an 87 percent increase. I assume we will review and adjust the amounts in June of2001, when all of the awards hopefully are finally realized.
It then goes on to say what he’s going to do. He says he’s going to catch DMG up to the level that he should be and then he’ll increase the amount each quarter starting in the third quarter by $218,450. Now, DMG, at least at that time your office thought was P.L. Blake, didn’t it?
A I don’t know. I said either P.L. Blake or Tom Anderson, who’s provided —
Q Did you send checks to Mr. Blake care of DMG for a period of time?
A My guess is we sent them to DMG or P.L. Blake or Mr Anderson, whoever was the principal at DMG, would be my guess.
Q And tell us what P.L. Blake did for $468 thousand a quarter through the year 2023 and $10 million on the front end, $50 million more or less?
A This was — this litigation from the beginning was quite unorthodox in terms of meeting fire with fire. The tobacco industry had all sorts of resources, particularly political resources, and as I explained yesterday, it was as much a political war as it was a legal war. P.L. Blake lived in Greenwood, and I think hunts with you on a regular basis.
Q No, sir, he doesn’t. I never hunted with P.L. Blake in my life, Mr. Scruggs, but whatever.
A He told me you shared a hunting cabin with him somewhere up north.
Q He paid for a pheasant hunt at the same place I paid for a pheasant hunt. I had never met him before. But that’s kind of neither here nor there.
A But P.L. Blake was a sort of a political operative in terms of being involved in state and national political affairs. One of these guys that’s sort of always behind the scenes, but has his ear to the ground. He was our sort of response from 1994 on, maybe even late ’93, when we first started thinking about this, to what the tobacco industry was doing. They had a network that was far more extensive than that, and we wanted to be alerted to political attacks before they actually hit us in the nose. For example, Governor Fordice filing suit to shut the whole litigation down in ’95 or ’96. Things like that. We needed to know things like that before they happened so we could head them off, and Blake had a network throughout the state and really throughout the nation that would sort of give us that heads-up information.
Q Well, let’s talk about your relationship with P.L. Blake, Mr. Scruggs. You represented him in bankruptcy at one point, did you not, sir?
WikiScruggs
5/12/9
Magnolia Tribune
