Scruggs told the gallery owner he wanted to know more about paintings, so she sent him an expensive book, designed to grace coffee tables, extolling art. Scruggs read it for a day, then lost interest in the subject.
When the office was complete, it gleamed with polished wood wainscoting. The floors were adorned with Oriental rugs, and the furniture was of the finest quality. The Scruggs Law Firm, 120A Courthouse Square, Oxford, stood out like a showpiece.
The Scruggses, père et fils, relocated their families to neighboring houses on a stretch of road north of town, where they planned to live until they could find bigger and more comfortable quarters for themselves.
The move to Oxford seemed to have worked. A bit of resentment lingered in the old community over Scruggs’s wanton spending, but the Scruggs family had essentially been assimilated into Oxford as part of the surge of alumni coming home. When asked, Scruggs invariably responded with handsome checks for local causes. They were putting down new roots. Dick and Diane found land just south of the campus, a large, wooded lot harboring deer and other wild game, where they planned to build a vast home that would shelter them the rest of their lives.
At the end of 2004, Dick felt that most of his problems had been resolved. Everything seemed secure, as warm and satisfying as a fever dream induced by drugs. But the next year, Scruggs’s life would begin to go haywire.
CHAPTER 9
D iane Scruggs began to notice a change in her husband’s behavior. Always a gregarious personality, he started to withdraw from social invitations. Apropos of nothing, he made startlingly weird remarks. Some days he would be driven home from work by his staff members and go to bed early. He blamed it on headaches, and he used that malady as an excuse to expand his search for medication.
He called various doctors asking for prescriptions for Fioricet. When the physicians were reluctant to give him carte blanche access to the drug, he discovered it could be ordered quite easily via the Internet. Unexplained notices—“It’s time for your prescription to be refilled”—began showing up on the Scruggses’ home computer. Diane learned the magnitude of Dick’s orders when she inspected an itemized credit card statement and saw a troubling number of shipments listed.
Concerned over her husband’s altered personality, Diane concluded that it was drug-induced. She called Dick to a “come to Jesus meeting” to discuss his problem with her. He agreed to stop using the drug. Instead, he became adept at hiding the tablets from her. He mixed them with the contents of an Excedrin bottle. After being awakened, night after night, by the noise of Dick rattling the bottle, Diane determined he was trying to fish out his Fioricet.
In the mornings, he seemed fine. But in the afternoons and evenings,he relied more and more on the drug. He insisted it was essential to his livelihood.
Scruggs looked for new issues to exploit. He felt he found one in the operation of nonprofit hospitals. Arguing that these institutions tended to overcharge uninsured patients and failed to devote an appropriate percentage of revenue to charity cases, Scruggs led a series of class action lawsuits by a team of trial lawyers across the country. More than four hundred nonprofit hospitals, many of them functioning under the umbrella of religious denominations, were targeted in roughly fifty separate suits. Though the cases spanned the continent, from New York and Illinois to California and Texas, Scruggs acted as the mastermind for the attack from his small office in Oxford. The effort won him greater approbation as an advocate for the little man, as the scourge of bottom-line values. After the suits were filed.
Time
magazine characterized him as “corporate America’s worst legal nightmare.”
Scruggs enjoyed the company of reporters and served as his own press agent, winning favorable coverage for his
When the office was complete, it gleamed with polished wood wainscoting. The floors were adorned with Oriental rugs, and the furniture was of the finest quality. The Scruggs Law Firm, 120A Courthouse Square, Oxford, stood out like a showpiece.
The Scruggses, père et fils, relocated their families to neighboring houses on a stretch of road north of town, where they planned to live until they could find bigger and more comfortable quarters for themselves.
The move to Oxford seemed to have worked. A bit of resentment lingered in the old community over Scruggs’s wanton spending, but the Scruggs family had essentially been assimilated into Oxford as part of the surge of alumni coming home. When asked, Scruggs invariably responded with handsome checks for local causes. They were putting down new roots. Dick and Diane found land just south of the campus, a large, wooded lot harboring deer and other wild game, where they planned to build a vast home that would shelter them the rest of their lives.
At the end of 2004, Dick felt that most of his problems had been resolved. Everything seemed secure, as warm and satisfying as a fever dream induced by drugs. But the next year, Scruggs’s life would begin to go haywire.
CHAPTER 9
D iane Scruggs began to notice a change in her husband’s behavior. Always a gregarious personality, he started to withdraw from social invitations. Apropos of nothing, he made startlingly weird remarks. Some days he would be driven home from work by his staff members and go to bed early. He blamed it on headaches, and he used that malady as an excuse to expand his search for medication.
He called various doctors asking for prescriptions for Fioricet. When the physicians were reluctant to give him carte blanche access to the drug, he discovered it could be ordered quite easily via the Internet. Unexplained notices—“It’s time for your prescription to be refilled”—began showing up on the Scruggses’ home computer. Diane learned the magnitude of Dick’s orders when she inspected an itemized credit card statement and saw a troubling number of shipments listed.
Concerned over her husband’s altered personality, Diane concluded that it was drug-induced. She called Dick to a “come to Jesus meeting” to discuss his problem with her. He agreed to stop using the drug. Instead, he became adept at hiding the tablets from her. He mixed them with the contents of an Excedrin bottle. After being awakened, night after night, by the noise of Dick rattling the bottle, Diane determined he was trying to fish out his Fioricet.
In the mornings, he seemed fine. But in the afternoons and evenings,he relied more and more on the drug. He insisted it was essential to his livelihood.
Scruggs looked for new issues to exploit. He felt he found one in the operation of nonprofit hospitals. Arguing that these institutions tended to overcharge uninsured patients and failed to devote an appropriate percentage of revenue to charity cases, Scruggs led a series of class action lawsuits by a team of trial lawyers across the country. More than four hundred nonprofit hospitals, many of them functioning under the umbrella of religious denominations, were targeted in roughly fifty separate suits. Though the cases spanned the continent, from New York and Illinois to California and Texas, Scruggs acted as the mastermind for the attack from his small office in Oxford. The effort won him greater approbation as an advocate for the little man, as the scourge of bottom-line values. After the suits were filed.
Time
magazine characterized him as “corporate America’s worst legal nightmare.”
Scruggs enjoyed the company of reporters and served as his own press agent, winning favorable coverage for his
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