A legendary lawyer sued hospitals for price-gouging their patients. And got his butt handed to him.

An Arm and a Leg

Documentary, Health & Fitness, Medicine, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The lawyer was Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, the lawyer who beat Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Later, he launched a series of ill-fated national lawsuits aimed at getting non-profit hospitals to quit price-gouging low-income patients, and chasing them hard for...

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	My name is Dick Scruggs.
0:02.4	I live in Oxford, Mississippi,
0:04.8	and I am a former lawyer and former inmate.
0:12.8	Dick Scruggs is being modest.
0:14.8	He is a legendary lawyer.
0:16.8	He made a fortune in the 1980s and 1990s,
0:19.4	fighting as best as companies on behalf of workers
0:21.7	who were sick in his hometown in Mississippi's Gulf Coast,
0:24.6	and then made a much bigger fortune
0:27.0	and a huge name for himself
0:29.1	as the guy who beat Big Tobacco.
0:31.9	He shows up as a character in a movie from 1999,
0:34.6	called The Insider.
0:35.8	Here's a clip from the film.
0:37.8	The governor of Mississippi is suing his own attorney general
0:41.7	to abandon litigation against Big Tobacco.
0:45.2	Yeah, Big Tobacco was, you know, big.
0:48.7	And he's the guy who beat them.
0:51.2	Later, and this is the former inmate part,
0:53.7	he took an enormous fall.
0:56.0	And this story takes place in between
0:58.1	that huge triumph and that huge fall,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from An Arm and a Leg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of An Arm and a Leg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.