Scruggs is just beginning a five-year sentence after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiring to bribe a judge with $50,000 in hopes of ensuring a favorable ruling in a dispute over $26.5 million in legal fees from a settlement of Hurricane Katrina insurance cases.
Scruggs came to prominence in the 1990s when he employed a corporate insider to take on tobacco companies in lawsuits, a move that that resulted in a $206 billion settlement. The case was portrayed in the 1999 film "The Insider," starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.