The Sun Herald has an article by Anita Lee on January 21, 2008 telling us a bit more about PL Blake:

A man who remains somewhat of a mystery, former Delta farmer P.L. Blake, is also part of the mix. The Scruggs team earned around $1 billion suing tobacco companies, and although Scruggs has fought sharing his fees in this and other cases with some attorneys, he had no qualms about agreeing to pay Blake $50 million over 20 years for work that led to a multistate settlement of tobacco litigation.

Litigation against Big Tobacco in the mid to late 90s was a legal and political minefield. Scruggs and Moore have said Blake had an inside track on the politics. Blake has explained he simply clipped newspaper articles, watched C-SPAN and tried to gauge the political winds for Scruggs.

Patterson's attorney, Hiram Eastland Jr., 57, said as a young boy he frequently encountered the older Blake on the Eastland plantation in Doddsville. Eastland described Blake as a quiet and gentlemanly fellow, always with a crisp crease in his khakis.

Former Gov. J.P. Coleman thought of Blake as a son, Eastland said. Eastland's father, Hiram "Chester" Sr., and Chester Eastland's first cousin, powerful U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, were friends to Blake. Young Hiram Jr. said his father and the senator didn't drink coffee, but kept a pot brewing on the plantation for Blake's visits.

Blake also happens to be close friends not only with Scruggs, but with Steve Patterson, a fellow horse-breeding enthusiast. Scruggs and Patterson trust Blake implicitly, court records show.

PL Blake and the New York Times

This article in the New York Times by Nelson D. Schwartz is of interest -- The Legal Trail in a Delta Drama, January 20, 2008.

Pete Perry and the PL Blake File

From a story by Bill Minor in the Desoto Times Tribune in on October 16, 2008 -- USDA boss Walters has checkered past -- we find this:

Another, Pete Perry, was fired in 1983 after numerous complaints about his management. Months after his departure, Perry was discovered by a longtime employee prowling through the agency's files on a Sunday night. It was later learned Perry had never turned in all his keys when he left the job. Somehow, no criminal or disciplinary action was ever taken by the USDA.

What adds a weird dimension to Perry's Sunday night escapade is that on a desk was found an open file of P.L. Blake, a large-scale agricultural operator from Greenwood who was then a target in a federal investigation into a Texas-based multi-million dollar farm loan scandal. Blake escaped any penalty in that case but several years later was nailed on a federal charge and fined for giving false information on a Mississippi bank loan.

Yes, this is the same P.L. Blake whose name surfaced earlier this year in the bizarre judicial bribery downfall of famed trial attorney Dickie Scruggs. Blake, evidence in the Scruggs prosecution had shown, was paid $10 million by Scruggs and promised up to $50 million to “keep his ear to the ground” and clip news stories (huh?) during Scruggs' management of lawsuits that recovered the multi-billion dollar damages against tobacco companies.

PL Blake and the $50 Million: Did he spread it around?

This post is pure mental speculation. One might imagine PL Blake might have been spreading money around from the $50 million he was and is being paid in installments for his political/litigation efforts. One thinks a bit of the story line regarding the campaign lobbyist characters in John Grisham's The Appeal (2008).

In the Scruggs - Lackey matter it does not seem one could say that Mr. Blake was spreading money around.

Why? It is very simple. If he was spreading money around why would he have been involved in conversations in which the $40,000 Lackey requested bribe was to be paid by Scruggs? He would not have, he would have just paid it himself. But he didn't. And, any overtures by Balducci regarding the amount would not have involved Scruggs, but they did. Thus, by this event one could not say Mr. Blake was acting as a bagman.

But, one does wonder anew about the extent and customs of earwigging in Mississippi. Seems a bit reasonable.

Tom Anderson and Dick Scruggs

A little over a year ago, NMC (Tom Freeland) on FOLO reported that Richard Scruggs had paid for over half of million dollars in campaign advertising for Tom Freeland in his campaign against George Dale for congress in Mississippi. See the March 2008 FOLO entry.

Here is Mr. Freeland's summary of some of the Tim Balducci grand jury testimony:

Patterson and Balducci went to meet Scruggs about the Anderson campaign, in which Scruggs had invested a half million dollars for t.v. commercials and print ads to beat George Dale, and when they went in, “Mr. Scruggs unsolicited said I’ve already alked to P.L. and I know Steve you’ve talked to P.L. and I just want you to know that everything’s okay. Y’all go ahead and get it done, and you’re covered.”

Balducci Testimony from FOLO.

P.L. Blake: The Move to Birmingham, Alabama

P.L. Blake and Shirley F. Blake had lived in the Greenwood, Mississippi area for years -- for Mr. Blake since he was a child. In 2008 they were no longer to be found living in the area. They moved to a residential area south of Birmingham, into a new home in a housing development.

Records show they moved to 2101 Christina Cove, Birmingham, Alabama in 2008. See the Huffington Post Campaign Contribution Records.

The home is in a new residential area. It is not unlike other homes in the neighborhood. See, e.g., Zillow.com.

It must have been hard for the Blakes to leave Greenwood. Their roots in the area must have been very deep, even into the mysteries of the place, the land, the treasures of historical events. Such a move would have broken one's heart.

Robert E. Powell and P.L. Blake, Inc.

Robert E. Powell was one of the incorporators with P.L. Blake of P.L. Blake, Inc. The records show his address on Old Highway 7 running between Greenwood and Holcomb. This is farm country.

Mark Blake has a home in Holcomb. The home is said to have been in the name of P.L. Blake until 2008. See FOLO.

Note, Shirley F. Blake lists a Greenwood address for political contribution purposes in 2000 and Birmingham for contributions in 2008.

PL Blake -- 1965 Business Location

208 Fulton Street, Greenwood, MS -- An early place of business for P.L. Blake

According to records of the Mississippi Secretary of State, Corporation Division, P.L. Blake, Inc. did business at 208 1/2 Fulton Street. (Note in the picture, there are two doors at the address. One might be the "1/2" -- use of "1/2" at an address usually means the second floor of a location if the second floor has its own entrance.

The location is the office of the registed agent of of P.L. Blake, Inc., P.L. Blake, who was also an incorporator. Another incorporator was Robert E. Powell of Greenwood.

P.L. Blake, Inc. was incorporated in March of 1965. The corporation has been dissolved but the records do not show when. If I am right this must have been an early business of P.L. Blake. He would have been about 28 years of age (he graduated from university in 1959 and played professional football (in Canada?) for a time).

Mt. S. Helens, The Transitory Nature of Life, the Characters in the Scruggs Drama

In two days it will be 20 years since the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington Cascade Mountains. With friends I climbed to the top of the mountain in 1976. It was a beautiful day, clear, not too warm. The summit was a perfect place from which to view Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, Glacier Peak, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters even further south in Cascade Mountains.

The mountain top we climbed is now gone. It exploded into fine dust and spread throughout the world. In Eastern Washington, 270 miles away, the dust came down like snow. I had over an inch of the stuff in my yard and on my house. The city was covered in a blanket of beige dust.

Colleen Rowell, one of our climbing group that day in 1976, is now deceased, her life claimed by Alzheimer's.

Why ponder about such things? It seems to me we have a hard time remembering the transitory nature of things. We want to deny the transitiveness which permeates existence.

So how does this apply to the Scruggs Matter? The Scruggs Matter and the characters and the actions of the characters in the matter are as much a part of the nature of things as the Eruption of Mt. St. Helens and the death of my friend, one of my snow skiing companions from 1959, the year P.L. Blake graduated from high school in Mississippi.

My interest in this "blog" is not to cast aspersions, it is to get to know the people in the drama.

Now some who read these words might be thinking "there are bad guys in this drama." Perhaps so, but remember the line between good and evil exists in every soul of every person and at all times. Not one of us is exempt from the commands and forces of nature.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago [emphasis added].

PL Blake and Insurance Blog

There is a wealth of information about PL Blake and his associations at this Rossmiller link.

PL Blake and Tom Anderson: Why?

One would like to know what the connection between PL Blake and Tom Anderson was all about. PL Blake seemed to be with his wife (Shirley F. Blake) firmly placed int Greenwood, MS. From there they operated PLB Grain Storage for a time and Dewitt Corporation. Their son Mark Blake who seems to have had a business called Mark Blake & Associates. From Greenwood PL Blake and Shirley F. Blake made political contributions. See, e.g. this.

Tom Anderson had been in Washington, D.C. working for Trent Lott. Senator Lott had been a very powerful senator. Anderson was there when Lott had his power.

Now the two, according to the Scruggs testimony in Luckey v. Scruggs are tied together in something called Developing Markets Group.

Obviously, Blake and Anderson came together at least for a time. Blake to do what needed to be done in Mississippi and the surrounding area? Anderson to do what needed to be done in Washington, D.C.?

And, now one must wonder why PL Blake and Steve Patterson are getting tobacco money payments when there is no word that Tom Anderson is getting any.

This is an interesting puzzle. And that is really what is of interest. How the puzzle goes together. The news that PL Blake is hiring lawyers is part of the puzzle.

Who is Tom Anderson?

From the Luckey v. Scruggs transcript earlier reported on this site, the big money flowed from Scruggs and his operation to DMG. Scruggs said “I think that stands for Developing Markets Group or something to that effect.”

He went on to say when asked “Who are they?” “I think -- I may be wrong, but I think it's Mr. Blake, but it could be Tom Anderson. I just don't know as I sit here now. Maybe you can show me something that will refresh my memory. It's one of the two of them, I think. "

Mr. Merkel next asks

Q Let's look at it. It says (reading:)

::As we discussed earlier today, the new payment to DMG will be 468,450 each quarter, an increase of 218,450 per quarter. This is based on the increase in fees from the base of 1.57 to 2.95 billion or an 87 percent increase. I assume we will review and adjust the amounts in June of2001, when all of the awards hopefully are finally realized. It then goes on to say what he's going to do. He says he's going to catch DMG up to the level that he should be and then he'll increase the amount each quarter starting in the third quarter by $218,450. Now, DMG, at least at that time your office thought was P.L. Blake, didn't it?

A I don't know. I said either P.L. Blake or Tom Anderson, who's provided
--

Q Did you send checks to Mr. Blake care of DMG for a period of time?

A My guess is we sent them to DMG or P.L. Blake or Mr Anderson, whoever was the principal at DMG, would be my guess.

So who is Tom Anderson? He was a longtime aide to Senator Trent Lott. The New York Times in October 1989 reported:

The 43-year-old Mr. Anderson, whose family runs a retail clothing chain in the area, has been a behind-the-scenes factor in Mr. Lott's longtime dominance in
the area.

As administrative aide and executive assistant to Mr. Lott,Mr. Anderson not only helped shape the combative persona that propelled Mr. Lott to a position of leadership as the House minority whip and a national spokesman for conservative causes, but also directed the important constituent services aspect of Mr. Lott's eight terms as Representative. The Strong Hand of Lott From the beginning Mr. Lott has taken a strong hand in pushing Mr. Anderson's candidacy. When the seat became vacant, he was believed to have discouraged Mr. Smith's widow and a number of others from running.

That has cut both ways for Mr. Anderson. On the one hand it has convinced some people that he will have access to the White House, but on the other it has raised the specter of bossism. A recent editorial cartoon in The Jackson Clarion-Ledger depicted Mr. Lott and Mr. Bush meeting at the airport, with the President carrying his lap dog, Millie, and Mr. Lott carrying a lap dog labeled Tom Anderson.

New York Times October 16, 1989 .

The Real Deal?

What Richard Scruggs and AG Jim Hood and others did with the claims against the tobacco companies is interesting and in a way, unusual. I must say, however, it is not really that unusual. One could see the genesis of the complaint, of the actions, in the asbestos litigation and the approach used in the asbestos litigation.

The "personal injury lawyer" is a dime a dozen. Ron Motley, the guy on the cutting edge of the asbestos cases, was nothing unusual. He was an entrepreneur -- in the field of personal injury law.

He was successful and we love success in the USA. Do we ever, we bend over backwards to advance THEIR causes, advance the causes of the gamblers, the great "Legal Eagles" -- how extraordinarily banal. And the causes, well, the "great causes"are really quite limited. And, when they are successful the "little guys" end up paying the damages, and, the attorney's fees and costs.

But things are worse than one might imagine. When have you ever heard of a PI lawyer taking a case with questionable liability, of questionable proximate cause? Let's be honest, the lawyers of the the great trial lawyers associations are good, mostly, at culling cases. The cases taken are those which have clear settlement value.

By the way, the lawyers on the other side were not much different in terms of opportunism. They were the apparatchiks of the "establishment." The exemplars of the Bernie Madoff style of success -- good name recognition, acceptance at the most prestigious country clubs, a likable, calm, confident. A pillar of success. The appearance of success.

The tobacco case and the various state AGs and their "retainers" in the case (I should not have said that, in the personal injury plaintiff's bar) were ready to be picked, plucked. To be culled into the "great case."

Washington state was no different than any other state -- Government Party AG (her name is Chris Gregoire) tied into the "big" litigation with "big" lawyers. Vanity law, one might call it.

And, were successful! So successful, every poor soul who smokes, and more and more poor souls who become smokers, and as they become poorer and poorer (the new effort of ruling class to make use of the poor while they say they are trying to help the poor), are now, and will be, paying for the damages and the attorneys' fees the tobacco companies have agreed to pay.

(We are all so content with our liberalism. So narcissistic we fail to realize the people whose causes we so vehemently champion are the ones who are paying for our "gosh we are so good liberalism," our "good politics.")

All thanks to PL Blake and his newspaper clipping services.

But let us face it, "we are a collection of fools, a covey of dissimulators. We are people who lie and who kid ourselves into thinking we are really good people. Good people because -- well, because "we care, and we on the right side." And we think we are making the rich suffer. And, we are too naive and self-satisfied to think, to know, the poor are paying for the satisfactions of our vanities.

It is all so complicated. But, the truth be told, there are bad people at work in all of this. And, I suspect the bad people who exist are also aligned with the good people we think exist.

Right now I am thinking PL Blake made his $50 million because of his Washington D.C. and Mississippi and the South political connections. PL Blake inherited something, he inherited a network of power. Who did he inherit it from? Maybe it was his own, but I have yet to know of a professional football player who had the talent to create a power network such as that which PL Blake must have been using. Something else is there, something to be found out.

PL Blake, Timing, Judicial Corruption

As an outside observer I have the impression there may have been over the years a milieu of judicial corruption where judges were, perhaps routinely, discussing the cases before them with others. Mississippi seems to have a rich tradition of "earwigging."

I wonder when PL Blake started to get large chunks of money from Richard Scruggs. In the early 1990's.

I wonder how much earwigging took place regarding the "tobacco litigation" which seemed to start for Scruggs and Hood and others in the early 1990's.

I wonder whether any earwigging regarding the tobacco cases was even necessary. Maybe there were no state cases. Of course, I think I know the answer to that. So I will dig for what I think I know.

Strange Stuff

Maybe learning about Billie Sol Estes would be worth it while we wait to learn more of PL Blake:

In 2003 Estes published JFK, the Last Standing Man (co-written with William Reymond) in France (Le Dernier Temoin). In the book Estes claims that Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in assassination of President John F. Kennedy. When interviewed by the American journalist, Pete Kendall, Estes said: “He (Johnson) told me if I wouldn’t talk, I would not go to jail.” Estes has had no contact with LBJ’s other long-ago associates, he said, since the book’s publication. “About all of them are dead, really. I think I’m about the last one standing.” That’s partly why, he said, he wasn’t interested in doing a book sooner. “I’ve been accused of being dumb,” he said, “but I’m not stupid.”

Billie Sol Estes: A Texas Legend

More Good Stuff from FOLO

Jerry Mitchell on Patterson (Mostly Blake).

When did the money start to flow?

Q And, Mr. Scruggs, you began in 1994 to loan P.L. Blake monthly amounts of money that started out at $15 thousand a month and escalated to $25 thousand a month. Actually, I guess the first one is November the 20th, 1993. Is that right?

A Sounds right.

From the transcript in Luckey v. Scruggs.

Pecos Enterprise: Billie Sol Estes

From the Pecos Enterprise one finds a wealth of information about Billie Sol Estes.

Some Bits about PL Blake from Folo

This post and its comments contain useful and interesting information and speculation about PL Blake.
http://www.folo.us/2008/02/26/holy-s-t-balducci-state-farm-jim-hood-scruggs-all-together-in-one-paragraph/

The Plainview, Texas Elevator

I am told this elevator was built by Billie Sol Estes. I am also told it was owned by PL Blake and the Dewitt Company while PL was living in Greenville, MS. It sure is a beauty. I bet a picture or two at ground level would be even more impressive.