Scrushy Civil Case Far Cry From Criminal Trial

There's no question top executives at the rehabilitation company cooked the books, overstating revenues and assets by millions each quarter to hide that it wasn't meeting Wall Street projections. But Scrushy says he didn't know about the fraud.

He's serving nearly seven years in prison for an unrelated bribery scheme in which he agreed to help raise money for the state lottery in exchange for Alabama's former governor appointing him to an influential hospital regulatory board.

The civil suit is being handled very differently from his 2005 criminal trial in the HealthSouth case, keeping the drama to a minimum.

Now, Scrushy's fate is being decided by a state court judge, making for fewer theatrics for a jury's benefit. The judge also issued a gag order on attorneys, eliminating the daily news conferences that helped make the criminal trial such a show.

Much of the evidence in the civil trial is being presented through video depositions rather than live witnesses, keeping high-pressure confrontations to a minimum and giving the trial the feel of a TV rerun.

The star of the case — Scrushy — hasn't even been in the courtroom yet.