By DAN MORSE and
RICHARD B. SCHMITT

Staff Reporters of
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

JACKSON, Miss. -- Talmadge Braddock stepped to the lectern in the 325-seat banquet hall. "We sent our hard-earned money to Wall Street, and they lied to us," the young plaintiffs' lawyer told the audience of potential clients. "Now we're asking for a little bit of it back."

…Here in the home state of WorldCom, a strange gulf has opened between alleged wrongdoing and those eager to help punish it. WorldCom Inc.'s admission of $7 billion of irregular accounting could end up among the largest corporate frauds ever. And it happened at a company based in a state with a plaintiffs' bar of legendary power. Lawyers here regularly wring millions of dollars in civil awards from big corporations, from makers of diet pills to funeral-home operators, and many of these lawyers are hungry for a piece of WorldCom.

…Early on, Mr. Braddock trained his sights on Salomon Smith Barney, which acted as an investment banker for WorldCom and administered stock plans for WorldCom employees. "Salomon Smith Barney is not going bankrupt," he says, noting that it's a unit of Citigroup Inc. "I'm not spinning my wheels here."

…Mississippi lawyers have a rich history of fighting for the little guy, often presenting their cases before populist jurors in some of the poorest counties in the nation. Last year, in a Harris Interactive Inc. poll sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 738 corporate lawyers were asked to rate legal fairness in all 50 states. Mississippi finished 50th in seven out of nine categories, including judges' impartiality and juries' fairness.

Plaintiffs' lawyers say it isn't so much that Mississippi is a bad place for companies to get sued, but that it's a bad place for them to misbehave.

Corporate-securities disputes, subject to federal law, usually end up in federal courts. Such restrictions won't necessarily hinder plaintiffs' lawyers who are going after WorldCom's officers, directors, accountants and consultants, rather than the company itself…