The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Scruggs was approaching his sixtieth birthday, and he entertained the thought, as many aging men do, of moving on to something new. One grand possibility seemed within his reach: to become an American ambassador . . .”

“His desire to become an ambassador grew as strong as his earlier yearnings to make the big lick. South America became the heart of his ambassadorial affections: he even settled on Ecuador as his next home. Surely, he figured, Trent Lott could deliver that for him. After all, Lott had arranged for Tom Anderson to serve as the ambassador in the Caribbean during the Reagan years. . .” (99-100)

“Scruggs began taking Spanish lessons. Confidently, he purchased a sixteen-seat Gulfstream, a luxury jet with the capacity to fly from the Gulf Coast to Quito without refueling. He even chose the figures to be painted on its tail: DS 368, The numbers referred to the $368 billion the tobacco industry had to put up to settle their case. The DS, he said, did not stand for Dickie Scruggs, but for “dollar signs.”

“At the beginning of the Christmas season in 2002, Lott attended a one-hundredth birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond of Southern Carolina. Before abandoning the Democratic Party and becoming a talisman for the ‘Southern Strategy’ that lured segregationists into the Republican Party, Thurmond had been the presidential candidate for the racist States’ Rights Democratic Party, known as the Dixiecrats, in 1948. Mississippi was one of the four deep states to give Thurmond its electoral votes. In the flush of the moment, more than a half-century later, Lott toasted his ancient colleague and remarked, ‘I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.'”

“In the ensuing storm of criticism, Lott gave up his position as majority leader within two weeks, and Scruggs’s dreams of becoming an ambassador died.” (100)

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“[Ed] Peters was seventy. His hair, which had grown gray years before, had now gone white and wispy. He was growing deaf and suffering from a cold . . . Though known as the chief fixer of Hinds County, he did not appear very menacing. He merely looked old and harmless . . .”

“[Steve] Patterson appealed to his old friend [Ed Peters] to help him in the case involving the bribe to Judge Lackey. Peters said he would like to help. After forty-five minutes of rambling conversation, [Joey] Langston and Patterson rose to leave.”

“Peters looked at his guests. ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘I’d cut my own throat for you.’ Then he made a slashing gesture across his neck with his hand.”

“Instead of protecting his old friends, Peters and his attorney, Cynthia Stewart, began meeting with federal authorities in Oxford . . . He was prepared to make a ‘Rule 11 proffer,’ in which he would tell all that he knew of the maneuvering with Judge DeLaughter in exchange for an agreement not to bring charges against him.” (265)

Zeus goes on sale today.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“In the fall of 1995, Scruggs called upon his best contact in the nation’s capital, his brother-in-law, the second ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate. He told Senator Lott of a possible breakthrough against tobacco . . .” (60)

“The tobacco issue did not thrill Lott. As a deeply conservative, pro-business lawyer, he was philosophically opposed to the profession of trial lawyers and the idea of mass torts. Over the years, he had become friends with many of the chieftains in the tobacco industry. But like his brother-in-law, Lott enjoyed swimming in political back channels and consummating deals behind closed doors. There could be something in it for him. A business connection. A political IOU. The satisfaction of brokering an important agreement.”

“The process would introduce Scruggs to the Washington branch of the Mississippi network he thought of as ‘the dark side of the Force,’ a consortium of political interests led by Lott and his principal factotum in Washington, Tom Anderson.” (61)

Zeus goes on sale Tuesday, October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The reviews of Wilkie’s Zeus are starting to appear in our local publications. Adam Lynch of the Jackson Free Press makes comparisons between Zeus and Lange/Dawson’s Kings of Tort published in 2009. Read Lynch’s review here. Bill Minor also wrote a review on Zeus in The Clarion Ledger. Read it here. Read more reviews for Kings of Tort here.

Read Both Books & Form Your Own Opinion

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Curtis Wilkie reveals the face of the elusive P. L. Blake

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“In late May 1994, the case to recover damages from Big Tobacco for Mississippi was filed in chancery court in Pascagoula, the home of Moore and Scruggs.” (page 58)

“For Mississippi, Moore would serve as the public official representing the state’s interests, while Scruggs would emerge as the principle voice for the plaintiffs. They worked in tandem, backed by the investments of others in the group . . . They called themselves the ‘Health Advocates Litigation Team’–HALT for short.” (page 58)

“Scruggs’s practice of making lone decisions for the partnership annoyed some of his associates. His freewheeling style and his propensity to make secret side payments to people such as P. L. Blake also ate into his own resources.” (page 59)

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We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

[In the 1997 tobacco settlement] “. . . Big Tobacco would pay out $368 million to compensate for health costs related to smoking.” (page 65)

“The total amounts coming to Scruggs seemed incalculable. Some news accounts had him getting as much as $848 million . . . ” (Page 65)

“Looking back on the period a few years later, Scruggs would tell a friend, ‘The money was obscene. Nobody thought we’d make money like this. It was a frenzy.'” (page 65)

“. . . Scruggs had been given a title: King of Torts. It complimented his college nickname, Zeus, king of the gods.” (page 66)

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“. . . [Mike] Moore built name recognition by challenging the Jackson County [Pascagoula] Bosses.”

“One of them was the legendary Eddie Khayat, known on the Gulf Coast as ‘The Godfather’ long before Francis Ford Coppola made his sequence of movies with that name. Not only was Khayat the president of the Jackson County Board of Supervisors, but he had long led the statewide association of supervisors, acting as chief representative for their interests in the state legislature. He was the ultimate insider, a fixture in the vast political constellation established by Senator James Eastland.” (8)

After Hurricane Frederick, Khayat “deployed county workers and public equipment to clear private property, repair private roads, and install culverts contrary to law. It was the old-fashioned approach to government, but the new district attorney, Mike Moore, found it unacceptable and was willing to confront the system.” (9)

“Moore indicted Khayat on eight counts of misusing public property . . . Khayat fought the charges for a while, but in the end, he agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor…” (9-10)

“[Scruggs’s] homeroom teacher [ninth grade] turned out to be the Godfather’s son, Robert Khayat . . . (21) In a way, Khayat, eight years older, represented the big brother Scruggs never had. Dickie called Khayat ‘Coach’. He used the honorific for decades . . .” (22)

“Appealing for leniency from Judge Biggers, the Scruggs Law Firm defendants mobilized a letter-writing campaign among their friends.” (314)

“. . . the letter that generated the most interest came from Scruggs’s old friend Robert Khayat. Writing on the university’s letterhead stationery, Khayat cited Scruggs’s ‘compassion and generosity’ and ended with a proposal:

‘It is my belief that any time he spends being incarcerated is an absolute waste of a great deal of talent and ability. He has much to offer society and is a public-spirited person. Furthermore, it would appear to be a waste of tax payers’ money. Punishment is relative to the individual. A man such as Dick has been amply punished by the loss of his profession and public stature.'” (315)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“As they plotted into 1994, word of the plan to use Mississippi’s Medicaid program as the fulcrum for their [tobacco] lawsuit spread among politicians in the state, and it did not meet unanimous approval.” (page 52)

[Charlie Capps, legislator for Bolivar County]: “The state is not going to pay for a single pencil.”

[Mike Moore, Attorney General]: “You see how much help we’re going to get from the state.”

“Scruggs called P. L. Blake and told him, ‘We don’t want a rear-guard attack by this group.’ He promised to pay Blake ‘to keep his eyes and ears open.’

“For good measure, Scruggs called Steve Patterson . . . Scruggs wanted Patterson to stay on top of things, to serve as a back channel, passing on information quietly.” (page 53)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Zach was meeting with his own attorneys in a conference room at the law firm when Mike Moore took him aside. ‘We need to talk,’ Moore said. They were joined by Scruggs in Zach’s small office.

“Scruggs took a seat in an armchair by the window, looked at his son, and said, ‘This is the latest government offering: They’re willing to give me five years, Sid three, and one for you.’ He paused. ‘I’m going to take it. I wish you would, too.’

“Zach was stunned. He had never expected the case to come to this. ‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to do it.’ He rose from behind his own desk, repeated his vow and walked out . . .” (298-299)

“‘Look,’ Keker said, ‘we’ve been overruled on every motion. I can destroy Tim Balducci and I can destroy Henry Lackey on  cross examination, but at the end of the day we’re still looking at this November the first tape.’ He reminded Zach of the negative results of the mock trial in Shreveport where the ‘jurors’ had little sympathy for the lawyer defendants. A real jury in Oxford would likely come down hard, too, Keker said. ‘Zach, they’ll look at you like a rich, white boy.’

“‘I’m not going to do it,’ Zach said.

“‘You don’t want to blow up the deal, put your Dad in trouble.’

“‘All right,’ Keker said. He did not press Zach further.

“Zach walked back into his own office. His father was still there, sitting quietly, staring out the window. His son was overwhelmed by the poignancy of the moment. He thought the scene would stay with him the rest of his life: the sight of his father, as if he were a monarch, looking out at his kingdom and watching it disintegrate–Zeus, the King of the gods, falling.

“Father and son sat together saying nothing.” (299)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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“‘There’s one other thing that I’ve heard about over the years, that when a substantial amount of cash is withdrawn, you have to sign . . .'”

“‘This money didn’t come from a bank,’ Balducci said. ‘Judge, I’ve been around long enough to know–and I’ve been involved in enough to know over time–that you always gotta have a slush fund.'”

“‘You can’t have gotten where I’ve gotten in my life at this point and not know that sooner or later things come up that you gotta take care of, and you need a slush fund.'”

“Lackey asked to see a copy of the order that would send the Jones case to arbitration. Balducci produced the document, which he described as ‘pretty straight.’ Then he laid an envelope containing $20,000 in cash on Lackey’s desk.” (187-188)

“Lackey had another entry for the journal prosecutors wanted him to keep.”

“‘As Tim walked out of the office,’ he wrote, ‘I felt so forlorn and sad that our profession had come to this, that a young man of Tim’s ability would be this cowardly and stoop this low at the behest of scum he is trying to help just so he can add another dollar to his pile.'” (189)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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