A group of former insurance adjusters who filed a whistleblower suit alleging that insurers have been systematically shifting the cost of hurricane damage onto the National Flood Insurance Program have asked the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out a lower court ruling dismissing their case.

The appeal by the group of unnamed insurance adjusters known as the Branch Consultants LLC was filed less than two weeks after Mississippi lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, who had a competing whistleblower suit over hurricane insurance issues, plead guilty to federal charges of conspiring to bribe a judge.

Allan Kanner, an attorney representing the Branch Consultants, said an appeal was forthcoming anyway, but the stunning downfall of Scruggs, a famed tobacco attorney, underscores why taxpayers shouldn't have to pin their hopes on one suit to pursue fraud against the federal government. (source:nola.com)