Nathan's Occasional Blog

MSN Money – Financial Times Business News: US court overturns Arthur Andersen conviction:

The decision comes too late to help Andersen, which now has only 200 employees, mostly lawyers and administrators.

…

The ruling stressed that withholding information from the government was not itself a crime. “Under ordinary circumstances, it is not wrongful for a manager to instruct his employees to comply with a valid document retention policy, even though the policy, in part, is created to keep certain information from others, including the government,” he wrote.

…

Robin Conrad of the US Chamber of Commerce said the case highlighted the consequences of overly aggressive fraud prosecutions “This is an instance where the collateral damage of over-aggressive enforcement takes its toll on the average citizen,” she said, noting that thousands of people lost their jobs after Andersen’s conviction.

As one of the guys I work with said this morning, “…and all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

Gee, nice to know now that the government has destroyed a company, burned millions of taxpayer dollars to completely destroy the investments of those same taxpayers, and trashed thousands of careers that it was all based on a bad ruling by some bungling judge. Shit people, way to go.

I mean under the prosecution’s way of thinking I shouldn’t shred my old credit card bills, etc. – I should post them on the Internet for all to see lest I destroy them and somebody want to see them (like a thief).

Friggin lawyers.