Sam Buell Quotations

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.

It's going to be the task of the cross-examiner of cumulatively undermining credibility with lots of small points, not coming up with some big bombshell that's going to leave one of these guys exposed on the witness stand in some dramatic way. It's just not going to happen that way.

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.

This is looking like a textbook case of the dangers of putting defendants on the stand.

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.

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.

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.