The Daily Journal reports about the Wilson v. Scruggs settlement:
The lead attorney, Charles Merkel of Clarksdale, was more specific.
“We’re in the process of wrapping it up against the Scruggses and their companies,” he said late Thursday. “Justice was finally served.”
Defendants in the latest incarnation also included former Hinds District Attorney Ed Peters, former state Auditor Steven Patterson and former New Albany attorney Timothy Balducci.
In a case prosecutors dubbed “Scruggs II,” they admitted conspiring to bribe then-Hinds Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter, Peters’ former colleague presiding over the first Wilson v. Scruggs.
While Peters got immunity for cooperation, former Booneville attorney Joey Langston admitted his guilt and is serving federal prison time. Patterson and Balducci are in prison for guilty pleas in “Scruggs I,” a conspiracy to bribe Circuit Judge Henry Lackey of Calhoun City in another legal-fees lawsuit against Scruggs.
Wilson did not sue Langston in the newest civil case because Langston made financial amends to Wilson before the suit was filed in Oxford, and Peters apparently settled with them recently.
“I’m very optimistic about coming to terms soon with one more defendant,” Merkel said late Thursday. “About another, I really don’t know.”
The AP story about all this, run in the Clarion Ledger picks up on a detail that seemed odd to me, about which more in a moment:
Patterson filed documents in federal court on Thursday accusing Scruggs of breaching a contract between the two by settling the Wilson case without contacting him or including him in the settlement.
I read that and thought: Huh? “Huh?” is the right reaction– as will be seen in the next post.
Whatever became of the Jones, Funderburg v. Scruggs suit, “the one that started it all” as the cliche goes?
justice was served? no, money was re-distributed!