The Fall of the Property of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America’s Most Effective Trial Lawyer

FEATURED The Fall of the Property of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America’s Most Effective Trial Lawyer

“Over the previous 4 decades no reporter has critiqued the American South with such evocative sensitivity and bedrock honesty as Curtis Wilkie.”
—Douglas Brinkley
 
The Fall of the House of Zeus tells the story of Dickie Scruggs, arguably the most productive plaintiff’s lawyer in America. A brother-in-law of Trent Lott, the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Scruggs created a fortune taking on mass tort lawsuits against “Big Tobacco” and the asbestos industries. He was hailed by Newsweek as a latter day Robin Hood, and portrayed in the film, The Insider, as a dapper aviator-lawyer. Scruggs’ legal triumphs rewarded him lavishly, and his success emboldened each his profession maneuvering and his influence in Southern politics–but at a terrible cost, culminating in his breathtaking fall, when he was convicted for conspiring to bribe a Mississippi state judge. 
 
Right here Mississippi is emblematic of the modern day South, with its influx of new funds and its rising profes