Maria Brown, a antediluvian hand of Nutt & McAlister, a law decisive that was and is a key player in Katrina legal remedy as part of the Scruggs Katrina troop, has sued the partnership for employment inequity, invade of pucker and other claims.  Click here to look over a copy of the lawsuit, and click here to look over the exhibits to the grievance.  Let's remember these are by a hair's breadth allegations and are only identical side of the story -- here's what the lawsuit alleges:

  • The firm knowingly kept electronic records of State croft die claims documents that had been ordered returned by adjudge William Acker in a December 2006 preliminary dictate.  You may retraction that Dickie Scruggs' failure to swiftly replacing his copies of the same documents resulted in his continuing prosecution for alleged criminal contumely of court in Alabama.  When Brown complained forth the keeping of the records, she was told it was OK because the documents were in the influential discipline.
  • "The entire locale was saturated with sex which consisted of sex innuendoes, genital acts, on-line masturbation, payments for progenitive favors performed in the broom closet, sexual overtures and adultery."
  • The firm promised to pay incorrect the $85,000 she owed on her well-informed in as a bonus in search working definite, but than paid her no more than $5,000 from Katrina proceeds.
  • Brown was sexually harassed, including by being presented a picture of the genitalia of a spear associate of the firm.  This bodily then asked her for a conceive of of her genitalia.  She declined. She up on management of the harassment but they did nothing at hand it.
  • She was terminated for complaining about the physical harassment and the "illegal project . . . with upon to Judge Acker's prelude dictate." 

The extraordinarily intriguing declaration is that Nutt & McAlister failed to conform with Acker's order. Because the law required the Rigsby sisters and their agents to return all copies of documents they had captivated from assert Farms claims contractor E.A. Renfore, the mistrust is whether Nutt & McAlister was an agent and what obligation the firm was to comply with the injunction.  Prosecutors say that Scruggs, as their attorney, was their vehicle.  But even if the SKG rather than Scruggs himself paid the $150,000 per year consulting salaries of the Rigsby sisters, that makes them agents of the SKG, not vice versa.  

The inclusion of the complaint is that the unshakable sent back paper copies but kept electronic copies, which, if true, would belie an assertion that the firm believed they were not subject to Acker's out of whack. Indeed, the gripe alleges that the justification for not deleting the electronic records was that they were in the public domain.  Some of the documents might, in fact, have in days gone by been used in litigation or accepted to the media, but that is not the same baggage as saying this excempts them from Acker's order.  We do not skilled in, from the allegations of the complaint, whether these electronic records purportedly were of all the 5,000 to 15,000 documents entranced by the Rigsby sisters, or but some.   

Again, it's only one side of the excuse.