Insurance Law

Scruggs Nation, March 14: beware the day before the Ides of March

By David Rossmiller

There's a hearing today in Oxford on the latest motions.  Someone in the comments yesterday asked what time -- 10 a.m. -- although if that pre-trial publicity was one-tenth as pervasive and inflammatory as the defense claims, I suspect he wouldn't have had to post a comment on a blog to find that out, he could have just listened to the people shouting in the street.  In any event, it's 10 a.m. -- pack up the babies and grab the old ladies, bring along your PDA or laptop so you can catch all the latest pervasive and inflammatory news, and head on down to the courthouse. 

Speaking of pervasive, here's an affidavit that was filed in court on the 12th along a motion I linked to in an earlier post, a motion for reconsideration of having the jury be anonymous.  The affidavit was another one of these "this publicity is killing me" things.  There were a number of exhibits, some of which I looked at, but most of which I didn't bother to download.  Because what they were is some press clippings -- looks like P.L. Blake is earning some of those millions Scruggs paid him!  You can look in the link above to the affidavit and see for yourself.  These exhibits were arranged by publication, you know, trying to make it look like there was a lot of them, a whole huge amount of prejudicial, inflammatory, mad dog, foaming-at-the-mouth-and-drooling-on-your-shoes press coverage.  But in truth, it was this stack that was pathetically thin. I'm talking thin like some character in Oliver Twist begging for some more gruel.  I said to myself, is this all there is? Because dang, talk about indictments, that wafer-thin stack was an indictment of the media coverage, all right.  An indictment of the lack of it.  (As always, I note there are exceptions to the lack of coverage, and you folks know who you are).

Also filed was the government response to the latest motions, which was that rarest of things, a brief that literally was brief.  Basically said the motions were old news and there was no need to come up with a new response.

One of the exhibits to the affidavit above was this supplemental jury questionnaire that the defense is asking the court to use -- I intended to write a satire of this thing, when you read it you will see why, but I ran out of time, so you'll have to make due on your own. 

Full post as published by Insurance Coverage Law Blog on March 14, 2008 (boomark / email).