The Gods of the Copybook Headings
As I was leave the room where we met, he folded his hands and asked, “When all this is over, are you going to be able to tell me how I got mixed up with these guys?”
I have tried.
Excuse me? How did Scruggs get mixed up with all these bad boys? Let me check the title of the book again. Oh yeah, Rise and Ruin of America’s Most Powerful Trial Lawyer. I thought we were talking about Zeus here. Just a few pages earlier, didn’t it say this: “Scruggs first drew blood from the asbestos industry and then brought Big Tobacco to its knees . . . . he was locked in an epic struggle with his most formidable opponent to date — the American insurance industry . . . .”
Um, how come one minute he’s the most powerful trial lawyer in the country and is up on Olympus kickin’ some tobacco, asbestos and insurance a$$, but then the next minute he’s a victim? Isn’t the better question how “those guys” got mixed up with him? Now, let me make a guess here — we’re going to hear some Poorer-Than-Thou talk. That is, we’re going to read a fair amount about Scruggs’ being poor when he was a kid and consequently he overcompensated about money and control and winning at all costs. With the point being the same one as in the great line in West Side Story: “Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived!” If so, try and sell that to Officer Krupke because I’m not buying.
OK, we’re off to an inauspicious and ill-omened start. I hope I’m wrong about what else the book is going to say — or leave out. But I bet I ain’t.
David Rossmiller
Insurance Coverage Blog
6/1/11
