Plaintiff lawyers buying judges?

Opinion Journal:

The Dickie Scruggs bribery case keeps getting curiouser, with yesterday's news that even the tort baron's former defense attorney has copped a federal plea.

Mr. Scruggs was indicted in November along with his son and three other lawyers for conspiring to bribe Mississippi Judge Henry Lackey. Two of the defendants have already pled guilty and are cooperating with the feds. And according to court papers released yesterday, Joey Langston, who had until recently represented Mr. Scruggs, has now pled guilty to conspiring with Mr. Scruggs in a scheme to influence a different judge in a separate case.

This new case involves yet another battle over dividing up attorneys fees, this time in state Judge Robert DeLaughter's court. According to the indictment, sometime in 2006 or early 2007 Mr. Scruggs told Mr. Langston that "he could arrange for [Judge] DeLaughter to be considered for a [federal] appointment" and said Mr. Langston should have that information conveyed to the judge. How Mr. Scruggs was intending to help Judge DeLaughter isn't clear, but it has escaped no one that Mr. Scruggs's brother-in-law is Senator Trent Lott.

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There is an art to negotiating settlements in complex cases and sometimes the Court can intervene to facilitate those settlements, but it is never supposed to be a beneficiary. The plaintiff bar has tainted the words "trial lawyer" to the point that the group has tried to change the name of their organization, but their conduct still carries the whiff of the skunky deals they have been making.