Class-Action Lawyer Gets 5 Years in Bribery Case

Richard F. Scruggs, whose successful battle against the tobacco industry in the 1990s made him one of the country’s best-known plaintiff’s lawyers, was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison for conspiring to bribe a judge.

Mr. Scruggs, 62, who goes by Dickie, pleaded guilty in March for his role in trying to pay Judge Henry Lackey of Mississippi a $50,000 bribe for a favorable ruling in a dispute involving a $26.5 million settlement after Hurricane Katrina.

Judge Neal D. Biggers Jr., who handed down the maximum sentence to Mr. Scruggs, called the crime “reprehensible.” Mr. Scruggs is to report to prison by noon on Aug. 4. The Mississippi federal court also fined him $250,000 and ordered him to pay for the cost of his incarceration. According to reports, Mr. Scruggs appeared nearly to faint during his sentencing.

His son, Zachary, who has also pleaded guilty in the case, will be sentenced on Wednesday.

Calls to Mr. Scruggs’s lawyer, John Keker, were not immediately returned.

Mr. Scruggs and Sidney A. Backstrom, a lawyer at Mr. Scruggs’s firm, who has also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, were charged last November. Mr. Backstrom was sentenced Friday to two years and four months in prison and fined $250,000.

The bribery prosecution stemmed from a lawsuit filed by John Griffin Jones, a lawyer in Jackson, Miss., against Mr. Scruggs and others, in which Mr. Jones contended he had been cheated out his share of a $26.5 million settlement in a case the two had filed against State Farm Insurance after Hurricane Katrina.

According to court documents, Mr. Scruggs, Mr. Backstrom and three other defendants in that case planned to bribe Judge Lackey, who was hearing the fee dispute. But the judge alerted federal prosecutors and then agreed to help them build a case.

Judge Lackey and another lawyer working with Mr. Scruggs, Timothy R. Balducci, discussed a bribe of $40,000. Then investigators confronted Mr. Balducci, who agreed to wear a recording device while he and Mr. Scruggs discussed the need to pay Judge Lackey an additional $10,000.

Mr. Scruggs agreed to take care of it, prosecutors said. Mr. Scruggs prepared documentation to hide the nature of the additional $10,000 payment, they said.

The case drew nationwide attention. Mr. Scruggs is well-connected to both political parties; he has made many donations, largely to Democrats, and has personal ties to Republicans. His brother-in-law is Trent Lott, the former Republican senator, and he counts among his friends Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi, a Democrat.

Friends and colleagues called Mr. Scruggs a charming man who dressed impeccably. He is a skilled lawyer and debater, said Victor E. Schwartz, a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, who has squared off against Mr. Scruggs in debates over the last 20 years.

“The sad thing here is that he didn’t need to cheat the system,” said Mr. Schwartz, who is general counsel to the American Tort Reform Association. “He was a phenomenal lawyer.”

Mr. Scruggs and his co-conspirators are the latest in a string of prominent plaintiff’s lawyers who have been found guilty of misdeeds involving their clients or their lawsuits.

Three plaintiff’s lawyers in Kentucky are being tried on charges of stealing millions of dollars from their clients in a dispute involving the fen-phen diet drug. This year, William Lerach and Melvyn Weiss, partners at Milberg Weiss, pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy after paying kickbacks to clients to win bigger fees.