Enron. Just saying the name sends a chill down the spine. In the minds of investors everywhere, it is the very distillation of corporate malfeasance.
On the back of a collapse that cost millions of people billions of dollars, it turns out that “The Smartest Guys in the Room” were nothing more that a collection of Lucchese clad confidence men, swilling bourbon at company box at Enron Field, and cooking up ponzi schemes that would make a Jersey loan shark blush.
While the annals of corporate malfeasance are certainly chock full of comparable scumbags (who here remembers Drexel Burnham?), the Enron boys are certainly at the top of the list. Rest assured good citizens, that while the wheels of justice turn slowly, they will eventually punish the guilty, those who profited from this thievery will be brought to heal, and the damaged made whole. Or not.
The Supreme Court recently declined to hear argument in a case brought by the Regents of the University of California against Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, and Barclay’s for their role in helping Enron unload their stock in the years preceding its collapse.
That decision mirrors a recent finding in StoneRidge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta which determined that lawyers, accountants, and other outside consultants could not be implicated in stock losses unless they were directly involved. In rejecting this theory of “scheme liability,” the Court is signaling that the same trick that the Feds use to prosecute mobsters doesn’t apply to private actions going after corporate crooks.
What this means is that those who aided and abetted Enron (Merrill Lynch, et al. hereinafter “the Get-Away Drivers”) have no liability to shareholders for their role in helping Enron (hereinafter “the Gunman”) commit the crime. I think I’ll keep my money in my mattress from now on.
Yesterday, I had what I’m convinced is a universal law school experience.
Last night, a classmate walked into the atrium outside our Torts class carrying a King Cake. That day at work, one of his clients (from New Orleans) had sent it to him as a thanks for his hard work. Some of us (including me) weren’t sure what a King Cake was, but quickly learned that it “is a ring of twisted bread similar to that used in brioche, topped with icing or sugar, usually coloured purple, green, and gold (the traditional Carnival colors) with food colouring.” The cake contains a trinket, most commonly (since 1950, at least) a small plastic baby. Whoever gets the trinket in his or her piece of cake, gets the privilege of being king of the party or has to bring the cake next year (or any number of traditions depending on context).
Anyway, you see where I’m going. One by one our classmates, when they heard the backstory of the King Cake, asked, “what if you bite into it and break your tooth.” To this, the owner of the King Cake proudly pointed out, “That’s why they printed this disclaimer on the packaging.” Clearly, he had thought of it too and checked it out.
Later that night, I explained to another classmate about the cake, what it was, why the guy brought it. He said, “What if someone breaks a tooth?”
Welcome to a new way of thinking where the first question is not “what does it taste like?” but “can the baker get sued for sticking a plastic baby in it?”
Last night was one of those nights for me. If you’re a law student - or have ever been one - you know what I’m talking about…
a paper due in a week that you have no idea how to write (or research)…
50 pages of case reading staring you down…
just received below average grades (in your estimation) in two classes (thankfully, just mid-terms, but still)…
It seems like there’s no time. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to back yourself into thinking it can’t humanly be done - or, more dangerously, that YOU can’t get it done. At least that’s what I can feel like - nearly arriving at your wit’s end, wanting to throw in the towel.
And then it kind of dawns on you (even if you don’t want to believe it): somehow you’re going to make this happen and you’re going to get through it. To get to this epiphany though you need patience. Sometimes the supply of that precious commodity is more plentiful than others. Incidentally, I’m not suggesting law school is unique in this way or perhaps even worth this kind of heartburn.
What do you do when you just never get to that point, though?
Continue reading ‘Gut Check Time’
I wanted to offer a corollary to The Sherpa’s post about the “worth” of a law school education. To frame the debate, let my first offer a little background.
I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago immediately after I got out of college. Since I went to an undergraduate institution that did not have a stellar reputation in the Social Sciences and my academic record wasn’t off the charts, I paid my own freight for the degree. The program – a one year masters – was marketed as being a way to burnish your CV, and get into a doctoral program. Assuming you decided academia wasn’t for you, the claim was that you would be able to parlay the degree into a far more substantive job that would offset the cost. Incidentally, the total cost of this enterprise, counting tuition, fees, books, moving expenses, and credit card debt was probably on the order of $60,000.
Continue reading ‘Do the Math.’
WSJ’s Law Blog (highly recommended reading) has this post from a former BU Law student, Kirsten Wolf, who graduated $100K in the hole, assuming she would land an “average” job that would net her $85K/year upon graduation. Despite passing the Massachusetts bar, Kirsten wasn’t able to find the mythical “average” job and decided to simply do something she loved. The only trouble is, she’s still $85K in debt and not making Big Firm Associate bank.
Continue reading ‘Is Law School Worth It?’
So, a co-worker asked how long it had been since I had a snow day home from school. It would have been super-cool if I could have said something like, “Man not since the Blizzard of ‘74.” You know, some date that really put some age on me, maybe some gray hair. Actually, my last snow day was January 2000. We got a pretty good ice and snow storm in Richmond (where my college is located) and, if I remember correctly, we missed two class days.
Sadly, I could not follow up my rather boring college kid blizzard capers with an inspiring rendition of my wild snow night plans, with all the reading I have to do. I must be getting old.
My favorite snow day has to be the blizzard we got in 1993 (I think that was the year; I was a freshman in high school). I spent the night at a friend’s house so we could get first tracks on the sledding hill and then we played the most epic game of snow football known to man - 4.5 hours of smashmouth football. (I’ll admit to wearing sleeves though)
what was your favorite snow day?
Just in time for my Torts class’ discussion about Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress comes this lawsuit from Jeb Corliss (this story was posted less than 2 hours before class yesterday) :
Jeb Corliss, the professional parachute jumper who tried to leap off the Empire State Building on April 27, 2006, released a short video today showing him struggling with plainclothes security guards and police officers on the observation deck.
Wearing all black and a parachute on his back, Mr. Corliss can be seen awkwardly clambering over the inward curving, spiked fence around the observation deck, then clinging to the outside of it as security guards rush over.
[...]Mr. Corliss gave the film — refusing to disclose its source — to reporters in New York today as he filed a lawsuit claiming that it was his life, not anybody else’s, that was most endangered by his stunt, not because of anything he did but because of the actions of the security guards.
[...]He was there to file a $30 million lawsuit against the Empire State Building Company, accusing the building’s agents of defaming his character, unlawfully imprisoning him on the observation deck and causing him emotional distress and lost income. His lawsuit was a counterclaim to a $12 million lawsuit filed against him by the Empire State Building Company last year, accusing him of endangering innocent bystanders. A building spokesman said at the time that the lawsuit was intended to discourage others from emulating Mr. Corliss.
Let’s see…
Can you inflict IIED if you’re stopping someone from committing illegal act?
What if a court has already ruled that “as a professional, Mr. Corliss was experienced and careful enough to jump off a building without endangering his own life or anyone else’s”?
