.A. Renfroe & Associates (the adjuster who was handling Katrina work for State Farm on contract, and whose employees were the Rigsby sisters, who became the alleged or erstwhile whistle-blowers for Scruggs) filed a motion asking the court to declare that Provost-Umphrey were disqualified because of their connections to the Barrett firm. The Renfroe motion is here.
State Farm, in this case represented by Scott Spragins, a lawyer in Oxford, filed, raising the same sorts of issues only more so. The State Farm disqualification motion is here.
The amount of contact involved– the effort by Katrina Group joint venturer Barrett to hand-off cases to Provost-Umphrey– makes it clear they aren’t going to last very long in the ongoing Southern District disqualification festival. What is more interesting to me is the narrative in the State Farm response. It seems that Meg McAlister of the Nutt law firm wrote all of the plaintiffs to notify them of Judge Senter’s order and tell them they had 45 days to find a lawyer. There was no implication that Nutt-McAlister was trying to hand-off the cases.
Given Judge Senter’s order, that’s what they should have done.
But shortly thereafter, Barrett, another Katrina Group lawyer, wrote, attempting the hand-off to Provost-Umphrey.
This suggests to me a second fissure in the Katrina Group lawyers. First there was the fissure that knocked off the S in SKG. Now it seems that the Nutt and Barrett pieces that remain may not be on the same page. Given Barrett’s absence at that hearing in Oxford in the Jones case, that is looking like a reasonable surmise.
FOLO
5/23/8
Magnolia Tribune
