This Chronicle story reports that Judge Melinda Harmon has postponed the trial of the consolidated securities fraud civil suits against former Enron insiders and and financial institutions that conducted business with Enron until October, 2006.
The number of depositions that are being scheduled in that case would chloroform a herd of cattle.
This Chronicle report indicates that the Enron Task Force and the Fastows are having some very interesting conversations of late, and the Task Force would like to continue the discourse.
This NY Times Magazine article chronicles the massive tort case that South Carolina trial lawyer, Ronald L. Motley, has brought in connection with the 9-11 attacks on the United States. Mr. Motley thinks of terrorism as a depraved and ruthlessly efficient business that Saudi Arabians largely finance. As Gerald Posner persuasively showed in his book “Why America Slept“, Mr. Motley believes that the 19 hijackers would never have been able to carry out their attacks without generous Saudi financial assistance. Accordingly, Mr. Motley has filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. federal court charging that a wide variety of Saudi parties sponsored the attacks by making donations to institutions that they knew fostered terrorism. Among the case’s 205 defendants are seven Saudi charities, three Saudi financial institutions, dozens of prominent Saudi individuals, and several members of the House of Saud royal family. Mr. Motley’s case is by far the largest civil case filed in connection with the 9-11 attacks — the families of 1,667 people who died that day, as well as 1,197 men and women who sustained injuries, have signed on as plaintiffs. This is an interesting article about a case that will be fun to follow.
Professor Bainbridge has this timely post on the SEC‘s announcement yesterday of its new 8-K “real time” reporting rules. Effective August 23, 2004, Form 8-K disclosures will need to be made within four business days rather from the current five business day-fifteen calendar day deadlines assigned to various 8-K items. A must read for corporate lawyers and executives in publicly-owned corporations.
The Chronicle reports on more developments in the ongoing saga of Robert Durst and his high profile defense team. Although the bail jumping charges appear to be legitimate, it strikes me that the other charges being pursued against Durst (abuse of a corpse?) appear to be quite strained. One gets the impression that the prosecution still cannot figure out how it lost its murder case against Durst. Earlier posts on the Durst case are here and here.
As noted here, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz earlier this week in a Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed slammed Martha Stewart‘s criminal defense team’s handling of the case.
Today, in a letter to the WSJ, attorneys Michael F. Armstrong, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom‘s Robert S. Bennett, and Ronald P. Fischetti lay the wood to Professor Dershowitz. They note:
Alan Dershowitz’s attack upon Robert Morvillo, led counsel in the recent trial of Martha Stewart (“With Lawyers Like These . . . ” editorial page, March 8) is both superficial and scurrilous.
Prof. Dershowitz, an academic who doesn’t try cases, demonstrates his lack of trial experience in his criticisms of Mr. Morvillo. For example, he derides Morvillo for not “introducing testimony by dozens of others ? experts, eye witnesses, character witnesses — who may have strengthened Ms. Stewart’s case.” He gives no indication as to the subjects upon which such experts might have opined, or the events such eyewitnesses might have observed. Nor does he mention the elementary fact that by calling character witnesses a defendant can open the trial to hearsay testimony about rumors and gossip, otherwise inadmissible, that could be far more harmful to Ms. Stewart than the testimony of friendly witnesses would be helpful.
Prof. Dershowitz also criticizes Mr. Morvillo for the fact that Ms. Stewart did not testify. But Prof. Dershowitz provides no basis by which one could conclude whether that decision was made by Mr. Morvillo or Ms. Stewart. No one, certainly not Prof. Dershowitz, can know what Mr. Morvillo’s advice was on this matter, and Mr. Morvillo cannot respond to Prof. Dershowitz’s charges without improperly revealing communications between himself and his client. Unfortunately, Prof. Dershowitz’s modus operandi here — attacking another lawyer knowing that he cannot defend himself without revealing privileged communications — is the same tactic he has employed to garner press coverage for his Monday-morning quarterbacking in other high-profile cases.
Far worse than his posturing, however, is his unsupported and almost casual attack on Mr. Morvillo’s ethics. He strongly suggests that Mr. Morvillo’s trial tactics were motivated by his desire to protect the lawyers who originally represented Ms. Stewart and who chose to allow her to be interviewed by the government.
Prof. Dershowitz charges that these lawyers and Mr. Morvillo were part of an “old boy network of former New York prosecutors who sometimes refer cases to each other.” On this alleged fact — and this alone — Prof. Dershowitz feels free to suggest that the decision not to have Ms. Stewart testify was motivated by Mr. Morvillo’s desire to avoid “potential embarrassment” to his friends and that the decision “may” have been influenced by “considerations other than the interests of his client.” This serious accusation, lacking as it does the slightest shred of supporting evidence, is reckless and irresponsible. Anyone who knows Mr. Morvillo knows his longstanding reputation for zealous devotion to his clients. To imply that he would rather see his client convicted than subject prior counsel to outside criticism is simply ludicrous. Moreover, Prof. Dershowitz’s promise — that the former lawyers would have been exposed by Ms. Stewart’s taking the stand — is erroneous. The lawyers had already figured heavily in the trial evidence and one of them actually testified.
Robert Morvillo has a reputation among fellow practitioners as a trial lawyer of great expertise who has always adhered to the highest ethical standards. Prof. Dershowitz has been frequently criticized for his conduct in cases. He would be well advised to stick to what he knows and resist the urge to view every guilty verdict in a high-profile case as just another opportunity for further self-aggrandizement at the expense of others.
Your serve, Professor Dershowitz.
The scheduling conference was held today in former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling‘s criminal case, and it doesn’t sound as if it went all that well for the Enron Task Force. Federal District Judge Sim Lake agreed with the Skilling defense team’s position that the Enron Task Force’s sledgehammer approach to indicting Mr. Skilling and other former Enron executives makes this an incredibly complicated and document intensive case, and the defense will begin to pick the Enron Task Force lawyers to death with pre-trial motions relating to document production and the particulars of the dozens of criminal counts against Mr. Skilling. Judge Lake was an experienced trial lawyer before taking the federal bench, and he is one of the best trial judges on the Houston federal bench, so he will have empathy for the defense position resulting from the Enron Task Force’s approach to the case. Contrary to popular perception, the Skilling case will not be an easy one for the Enron Task Force, which does not have much of a trial record in Enron cases to date. I expect this to be a very entertaining case to follow. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, in other Enron-related news, this Chronicle article reports on yet another Enron-related civil lawsuit. In this one, a trust created in the reorganization of LJM2, one of Andy Fastow‘s infamous “off-balance sheet” partnerships that Enron used to mask debt, is seeking a mere $75 million from former LJM2 investors (i.e., banks and brokerage houses that wanted to curry favor with Enron during its better days) wrongfully ignored a capital call from the partnership in 2002 after Enron went into the tank in late 2001. The trust has sued 55 investors, including a Citigroup unit and Weyerhaeuser‘s pension fund.
At some point, I fully expect some enterprising financial institution to promote an ad campaign based on the fact that they are one of the few institutions in the United States that has not been sued in an Enron-related lawsuit. That is, if there are any left!
One of the recent stories from the soft underbelly of the Houston criminal scene has been the one about C. Tom Zaratti, a long-time fringe player in the Houston criminal defense bar. This Houston Press piece reports on the surprise that confronted Mr. Zaratti’s ex-wife this past holiday season when she found Mr. Zaratti after he failed to show up to pick up his son for visitation.
In connection with entering the guilty plea of a United Transportation Union officer in a criminal case involving alleged kickbacks, an assistant U.S. Attorney informed federal District Judge Sim Lake yesterday that the U.S. Attorney’s office is currently investigating several unnamed Houston attorneys in connection with its probe of the union. The UTU website lists four designated counsel from the Houston area. It is unknown whether any of the four are targets of the investigation referred to above.