“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything” about the Relators’ attorneys

I stand squarely in the corner with the two Missouri firms on their request for reconsideration of their disqualification – chiefly because of the way State Farm has handled it from their end – although I fully understand and support Judge Senter’s goal of getting the policy holder cases “clean” so the likelihood of challenges once they are decided in his court is reduced to a minimum.

What he’s missed, skirted, or flat out ignored IMO is McIntosh is an inappropriate case for deciding anything about the two Missouri firms.

In that regard – and without benefit of the legal education of many of our readers – I don’t see how his decision can stand – right or wrong. In other words, I think this one has to start all over.

I’ve gone back and read State Farm’s petition to the 5th on Senter’s ruling that denied their initial attempt to disqualify SKG – and all the related documents both sides presented along with the 5th’s decision.

Senter’s solid on his decision to disqualify SKG/KLG and others based on my reading – particularly the 5th’s decision.

However, his decision on the two Missouri firms sticks out like a sore – and stretched – thumb.

Two things trouble me greatly about the assumptions he made about their relationship with Scruggs. One, no one has fairly examined it to see if it was a “sham” and Senter’s standard of the work required is way off base – and it came straight from State Farm although I doubt he even realizes that. A consultant’s value is determined by results and not the amount of work required.

The other is the idea that no real work was intended and that the money paid them was payment for the “data dump” documents and it just doesn’t fly when you examine what SKG accomplished during their first year of employment on non-State Farm cases.

I’m not saying that I’m right, btw, or that anyone is right. We don’t know that yet and never will unless something is done. What I’m saying is there has been no consideration given to the possibility anything is wrong with those assumptions about the relationship that factored into his decision to disqualify their attorneys – and that’s flat wrong.

It’s also wrong, to decide anything based on the Rigsby sister’s depositions without a hearing to clarify and/or confirm the meaning of what they said. We’re talking about two young women with virtually no knowledge of or exposure to the legal system finding themselves in the smack dab middle of an extremely complex set of cases and issues and asked to remember things in minute detail.

They were asked the kinds of questions no one can fully answer without the copious notes one might take when looking for something wrong – they weren’t looking. Instead, they kept finding things and hearing things that were disturbing – the kind of things you’d rather not see or hear and want to forget.

I know our lawyer-readers have taken many a deposition but I don’t know if any have given one. I have; and, it is an awful experience even with the truth or your side. I worried – needlessly as it turned out – that I was not asked the questions needed to give some of my testimony the context needed for others to understand the actual/factual meaning of a truthful answer.

Read their depositions from that perspective and their use of language as appropriate for their age and you’ll get an entirely different picture than is given when their words are used against them.

Their claim was filed over two years ago and there has yet to be discovery – it wasn’t even possible until the stay was lifted in February and SF started moving on this latest round of disqualifications before the Missouri firms could “discover” anything other that what they had when the claim was filed. They couldn’t even discuss the case until the seal was lifted.

There’s not any evidence I’ve found in either the Alabama case or those here, where the qui tam attorneys are listed as receiving notice of any related activity and yet the qui tam claim is discussed in any number of those documents. A part of that has to be due to Scruggs trying to keep qui tam clean – and these guys distant until they were allowed to do their job. Most of it’s just the fragmentation intended by coming after the girls from every direction.

Two senior judges – Senter and Biggers – handling two extremely high profile cases that have been tried in the court of public opinion to the point that they, too, are at risk of being causalities of Katrina – subjected to as much injustice as anyone else for lack of full and accurate information.