In a prior post about a letter from Rex DeLoach to Lee Young, who with Charles Mikhail has sued Scruggs and his firms over deducting payments to Luckey and Scruggs’s lawyers for defense costs in the asbestos fees litigation, I wrote: “Oh, and in addition to deducting the defense costs and the Luckey judgment pay-off, Scruggs and DeLoach deducted the $3M that went to Langston and Peters.” This post is intended to correct that sentence, which should have read: “Oh, and in addition to deducting the defense costs and the Luckey judgment pay-off, Scruggs deducted the $3M that went to Langston and Peters.” I am making this correction in the original post.
Nothing in these suit papers (or anything else I know about) suggests that Mr. DeLoach knew about the $3M payment to Langston before the payments became public in the criminal cases or was involved the payment. I am therefore posting this correction, with some explanation of what is in the suit papers filed by Mikhail and Young relating to the payments to Langston.
The only mentions of Mr. DeLoach in the complaint relate to his letter of November, 2005, written after Magistrate Judge Davis had decided the Luckey case. According to the public information I have seen, Langston had already worked on the Luckey case but this was just before he was hired in the Wilson case. It was written well before Langston was paid by Scruggs relating to the hiring of Ed Peters.
All DeLoach’s letter says about legal fees is a reference to “other persons sharing in the fees” and that Scruggs “does intend to ask those sharing tobacco fees to share the legal defense costs [of Wilson] since the Wilson case is still a reach for tobacco fees.”
The complaint itself refers to discussions between the plaintiff, Milkhail, and Timothy Cantrell, an accountant / financial consultant for SMDB, Inc., in which Cantrell asked “to provide an explanation and accounting for the large payments to Langston, and for itemization of what legal services Langston was providing to earn and justify such large fees, in view of the legal and, particularly, ethical requirements that attorneys’ fees be reasonable.” [I'm going to pause at the unrelated irony of a tobacco fee recipient complaining based on the ethical requirement that attorneys fees be reasonable] “Cantrell expressed to Mikhail curiosity about the large payments to Langston but advised that after checking with Defendants, Plaintiffs would not be provided with an explanation or accounting.” Complaint at 6-7.
Rex Deloach and Tim Cantrell are good, honest men. It is unfortunate that their names are associated with any of this.
NMC may be having one of those “is this damn blog even worth it?” kind of days.
It’s not so much that as “are these work projects worth it?”
I have stuff to blog about but not enough time to pull them together. Will ahve something this afternoon.
Is there wireless access on the balcony at City Grocery? We could blog from there this afternoon,NMC. I blog better with beer. Or maybe it’s just the beer-goggle effect on blogging.
nmc:
I gather your intent was to correct your earlier post, you failed; you simply repeated it.
There’s wireless access. I’d love to escape this office right now.
No, meanderline, I made the one correction I’d said I would make– the sentence: “Oh, and in addition to deducting the defense costs and the Luckey judgment pay-off, Scruggs and DeLoach deducted the $3M that went to Langston and Peters.” It now reads (with two words deleted– “and DeLoach”– “Oh, and in addition to deducting the defense costs and the Luckey judgment pay-off, Scruggs deducted the $3M that went to Langston and Peters.”
I just checked the original post, and the correction is made there. I just checked the post above, and it explains what I did. I’m not sure what you’re saying I haven’t done.
No, meanderline, I made the one correction I’d said I would make– the sentence: “Oh, and in addition to deducting the defense costs and the Luckey judgment pay-off, Scruggs and DeLoach deducted the $3M that went to Langston and Peters.” It now reads (with two words deleted– “and DeLoach”–) “Oh, and in addition to deducting the defense costs and the Luckey judgment pay-off, Scruggs deducted the $3M that went to Langston and Peters.”
I just checked the original post, and the correction is made there. I just checked the post above, and it explains what I did. I’m not sure what you’re saying I haven’t done.
kbl, it’s “Google Beer-goggles”. And, based on NMC’s double post, they need to come out with “Google Blogger Beer-goggles”.
There’s a parenthesis that doesn’t close in the first comment but does in the second. The correction somehow created that dobule comment, WTBAL. Since you’ve mentioned it, I’ll leave them both there for the sake of completeness.
Perfect is the enemy of good, NMC.
Dear NMC:
I guess I misread it despite reading it thrice. I see it now. Very sorry for the aggravation.