‘Insider’ Wigand compensated generously as unpaid tobacco fact witness

WHEELING, W. Va. – In a Disney film, “The Insider,” scientist Jeff Wigand and lawyer Dickie Scruggs save America from evil cigarette makers.

In real life, Scruggs faces a bribery indictment in Mississippi and Circuit Judge Arthur Recht of Wheeling examines financial records of Smoke Free Kids, a foundation that pays Wigand $125,000 a year.

. . . . Now Wigand carries Scruggs’s baggage into Recht’s court.
Wigand carries his own baggage too.

He testified in 1995 that Brown & Williamson put rat poison in pipe tobacco, fueling national desire for retribution.

Years later, under oath, he called the statement “scientifically incorrect.”

Once he testified at trial, left before cross examination and did not return.

A judge permitted cross examination by deposition.

Once, after he pleaded that an injury prevented him from testifying, sleuths tracked him like a personal injury plaintiff and photographed him in routine activities.