Considered as one of Mississippi's richest men, Richard Scruggs is a prominent trial attorney with an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion. He began earning mainstream attention after he successfully represented the ill shipyard workers against the asbestos industry. Eventually, he represented the Mississippi state in a tobacco litigation.

Richard F. Scruggs was born on May 17, 1946 in Brookhaven, Mississippi USA. He is a graduate of University of Mississippi and University of Mississippi Law School. He is currently married to Diane Scruggs.

In 2007, he was indicted on bribery charges which he pleaded guilty in 2008. The district judge sentenced him five years in prison. In 2009, he committed the same crime which sentenced him to prison for seven years. On the same year, the success and failures of Scruggs as an attorney was documented by Tom Dawson and Alan Lange on their Kings of Tort. A year later,  Curtis Wilkie's The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer, was published.