Comments on: “$1 Billion Legal Fee Eyed in Enron Suit” https://www.overlawyered.com/2006/05/1-billion-legal-fee-eyed-in-enron-suit/ Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:55:35 +0000 hourly 1 By: Enron: class action lawyers set to get $688 million https://www.overlawyered.com/2006/05/1-billion-legal-fee-eyed-in-enron-suit/comment-page-1/#comment-28943 Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:55:35 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=3519#comment-28943 […] feedback” from these supposedly “unlikely legal circles” to support his case? (more background, yet […]

]]> By: wavemaker https://www.overlawyered.com/2006/05/1-billion-legal-fee-eyed-in-enron-suit/comment-page-1/#comment-3075 Thu, 01 Jun 2006 08:56:03 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=3519#comment-3075 Both examples are obscene. One was criminal, the other is sanctioned by the Courts.

Which is more obscene?

]]> By: Will Kamishlian https://www.overlawyered.com/2006/05/1-billion-legal-fee-eyed-in-enron-suit/comment-page-1/#comment-3074 Wed, 31 May 2006 22:16:33 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=3519#comment-3074 This is obscene. In my opinion, the grab being committed by Enron plaintiffs and lawyers is as heinous as that committed by Skilling and Lay. These investors somehow claim that they were not responsible for basic due diligence in the form of basic financial statement review. The media has painted the Enron collapse as some sort of hiddent conspiracy; however, Enron duly reported extremely questionable transactions in the years prior to its collapse.

If you doubt this, check out Enron’s 10q and 10k filings leading up to the crash. There is much in there that should have made investors, especially institutional investors, run away. Take a quick look at the footnotes for “Related Party Transactions.” In FY 2000, Enron did $1.2 billion in transactions with its officers. I am not a professional equities analyst; however, these transactions seemed to have been a shell game designed to trade equity for debt and thus increase leverage.

An amount of $1.2 billion in Related Party Transactions is more than a red herring. It is a rotten dead fish. This causes me to wonder how responsible financial advisors, such as those at the University of California, could advise purchasing and then holding Enron stock:

  • Did they not receive Enron’s annual reports?
  • Did they feel that such reports were not important?
  • Did they not feel responsible for reading those reports?
  • Were they incapable of understanding these reports?
  • Or did they simply feel that washing $1.2 billion was not a concern?

Defense lawyers could get a jury to understand the financial shenanigans that Enron publicly reported; however, I doubt that would do much against the emotional power of the recent convictions in addition to testimony from those who had their paper pension gains wiped out.

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