SICK OF HOSPITAL BILLS

Helped by two whistle-blowers, the lawyer who beat Big Tobacco is on a new crusade--to fight what clinics charge the uninsured

RICHARD SCRUGGS IS CORPORATE America's worst legal nightmare. In the 1980s and early '90s, he made millions litigating asbestos claims and went on to national fame for beating Big Tobacco, representing the whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, subject of the movie The Insider. Scruggs' tobacco suits netted his practice an estimated $1 billion, money that bought him toys, from a $100,000 Bentley to a Falcon jet--and turned him into the dart-board face of tort reform. At 58, he works out of a small firm in Oxford, Miss., with his son Zach and two other lawyers. Scruggs has given up the Bentley for a...

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