11 Quotes by Sam Buell

WorldCom could occur in any era, it's more traditional book cooking. It's hard to think of another one of these cases really is like Enron in the sense that it raises fundamental questions of accounting and financial reporting.

It can only hurt the defendant. Even if it's something that's not done with bad intent, it looks bad. Lay either didn't get that advice, or he got it and he ignored it.

The deepest, most complex, most system-related case would be the last one to be resolved in all of this.

A watered-down version of what the government's most persuasive witnesses have already said can only dilute the case, even if limited to rebuttal.

The reliance on professional advice defense depends on a full disclosure of the relevant facts.

They're going to be confronted for the first time with lots of detailed questions that they didn't face before because the questioners didn't know all the facts yet.

There's been such a long period of buildup and anticipation for this trial that people expected some kind of immediate payoff in instant bombshell revelations, and that's just not the way criminal trials work.

It's easier to prove if they were extremely flagrant or brazen about what they were saying. But typically that's not the case in a conspiracy where people are trying to accomplish something in more subtle ways.

It's not just a question of whether all the facts to one transaction were disclosed, but also whether a professional is being asked to give the advice within the right factual context.