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.