Dickie Scruggs, who gained fame and considerable fortune in the 1990s for his part in suing large corporations for billions, was sentenced today to five years in prison for conspiracy to bribe a judge. Scruggs’ son will be sentenced next week for his role in this family affair.

There are a lot of lessons one could draw from this sorry business, but one of the most important may be the moral hazards involved in putting our courts in the business of redistributing such large sums of money. Whatever else one might say about Scruggs, he knew his way around a courtroom, and he clearly thought $50,000 bribe was enough to gain a favorable ruling in a case with a pay-off of $26.5 million.

The FBI deserves kudos, not only enabling justice to be done in this case, but helping to protect our system of justice as a whole from people consumed by the kind of gargantuan greed we’ve been told only large American corporations can be guilty of. Mississippi’s Sun Herald has an article describing the sentencing here.