NYT – Court Intrigue for the King of Torts

Court Intrigue for the King of Torts

Mr. Scruggs’s own boasting about his ability to win verdicts from sympathetic small-town juries and judges will offer plenty of fodder for critics when his case goes to trial. What tort reform supporters call “judicial hellholes” — venues considered perilous for corporate defendants — Mr. Scruggs calls “magic jurisdictions.”

These are places, he said at a Prudential Securities conference in 2002, “where the judiciary is elected with verdict money. The trial lawyers have established relationships with the judges that are elected.” In these places, he added, “the cases are not won in the courtroom. They’re won on the back roads long before the case goes to trial.”

NY Times
12/7/7