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Declaration Of Helen J. Hodges In Support Of Lead Counsel's ...

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scenario that if the truth were told, Enron was insolvent by year-end 1999 and that fact would have<br />

been revealed no later than March 30, 2000, when Enron filed its Form 10-K.<br />

227. To efficiently conduct discovery and prepare the trial evidence for a simple, but<br />

compelling presentation, we spent considerable time working with our experts and consultants, to<br />

identify the types of information that best proved defendants’ wrongdoing, and to help our experts<br />

form their opinions, based on the hundreds of thousands of documents reviewed to establish<br />

evidence of defendants’ knowing participation or severe recklessness in the alleged fraud.<br />

Moreover, proving damages in a securities case is always a complicated matter, but especially so<br />

here because of the number of securities involved, the wide disparity in the experts’ view, the<br />

complex financial vehicles, and the novel legal issues. The range of damages by the experts<br />

presented us with not only the task of simplifying the discussion for a jury, but also the issue of how<br />

to rebut the considerable efforts by the banks to demonstrate that the Company’s stock-price decline<br />

in 2001 was an energy-sector-wide effect not attributable to their Enron transactions or conduct –<br />

they were just doing banking business. <strong>In</strong> addition, we gathered and analyzed evidence to prove<br />

loss causation while defendants argued that we could not prove loss causation because their fraud<br />

was not revealed until after Enron’s stock price had fallen and Enron was in bankruptcy.<br />

228. <strong>Lead</strong> Counsel’s work with its experts, in preparing their substantive reports, and in<br />

pretrial preparation, entailed culling from an overwhelming amount of relevant data the most telling<br />

evidence and then repeatedly simplifying it in understandable diagrams, and comparatively few<br />

documents and persuasive bullet points for the jury.<br />

XI.<br />

REPRESENTING THE CLASS IN ENRON’S AND LJM2’S<br />

BANKRUPTCY CASES<br />

229. <strong>In</strong> December 2001, I reviewed Enron’s bankruptcy docket and oversaw preparation of<br />

our pleadings for filing there. I coordinated those efforts with attorneys from our New York office.<br />

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