Like father, like son.
David Zachary Scruggs, the son of plaintiff’s attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, has followed his father’s lead and pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Scruggs, who is known as Zach, acknowledged in court Friday that he was aware of, but did not report, the fact that his father and other associates were attempting to influence a Mississippi judge.
Zach Scruggs told the court that while he knew of the efforts to influence the judge, he did not know that his father and others had offered the judge a bribe.
In pleading to a felony charge, Zach Scruggs, 33, a partner with his father in the Scruggs Law Firm, will lose his license to practice law.
“I’m here today to accept full responsibility for my acts,” Scruggs said Friday.
Prosecutors have recommended that he also be given three years probation rather than time in prison.
Scruggs was the last of five defendants to plead guilty in the case.
On March 14, his father, a lawyer who had made millions of dollars in high-profile lawsuits, conceded that he had attempted to bribe Circuit Court Judge Henry Lackey of Mississippi.
Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of up to five years in prison for Dickie Scruggs and a fine of $250,000.
Scruggs, who is the brother-in-law of former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., faced a much longer sentence if convicted at trial.
The case began last November when Timothy R. Balducci, another lawyer acting on Dickie Scruggs’s behalf, offered Lackey $40,000 to rule in Scruggs’s favor in a case involving a dispute over legal fees.
Lackey had turned to the FBI when Balducci first approached him and his conversations with Balducci were secretly recorded.
Balducci has entered a guilty plea, as have Sidney A. Backstrom, a law partner of Mr. Scruggs and Steven A. Patterson, the former Mississippi state auditor.
Dickie Scruggs, who is a native of the Gulfport community of Pascagoula, Miss., and a graduate of the University of Mississippi Law School, first made millions in asbestos-related suits filed on behalf of workers in the shipbuilding industry.
In the 1990s, he led a suit against tobacco companies that gained almost $250 billion in a 1998 settlement. Scruggs’ firm was said to have received $1 billion.
The movie, The Insider, looked at the tobacco case and the involvement of whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand.
John W. Keker, a San Francisco lawyer, has represented him in this case.
Keker prosecuted Oliver L. North in the Iran-Contra scandal. He has represented many high profile clients, including Andrew S. Fastow, Enron’s chief financial officer and Frank Quattrone, a Credit Suisse First Boston investment banker.
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