Andersen Verdict Overturned

By Erin in News on May 31, 2005 6:43PM

Chicagoist ain't gonna lie -- the Supreme Court's ruling today, which overturns the conviction of Arthur Andersen for destroying Enron documents before the its demise, leaves us feeling as though we're watching a real-life version of the 1986 season finale of Dallas where with each droplet of water that fell from Patrick Duffy's well-coifed hair in the infamous shower scene we understand that the entire agony that was that year's Dallas was all a big nasty dream.

Of course in this version it ain't a TV show, a Chicago-based company really did fall apart and it doesn't change the fact that 28,000 people lost their jobs. Just typing out that number gives us the creeps. Those were dark days in Chicago and nary a person in this community wasn't touched in some manner.

We won't pretend that we understand all of the elements of this case; we just understand hordes of people losing their jobs because someone who was probably overpaid anyway fucked up somewhere. At both Enron and Andersen.

As it stands, the Supreme Court unanimously rules that the instructions given by a federal judge in Houston failed to convey properly the elements of what constitutes a conviction for corrupt persuasion. Andersen, as Enron's auditor, was convicted on a count of corruptly persuading its employees to destroy documents in October and early November 2001, to keep them from federal investigators.