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

• Reviewed over 70 million pages of documents produced by defendants and third-parties;
• Participated in over 370 depositions of defendants, former employees, third-parties, experts,
and class representatives;
• Propounded interrogatories and Requests for Admission (“RFAs”) to streamline depositions;
• Completed detailed discovery responses, which included extensive interrogatories and RFAs;
• Prepared market efficiency, damage, investment-banking, disclosure, tax, credit-ratingagency,
ethics, insolvency and accounting experts for their depositions, after assisting in the
compilation of their reports, which were crucial to class certification, summary judgment and
trial issues;
• Reviewed and analyzed expert reports generated by, and deposed each of, defendants’ 40
experts;
• Led several focus group sessions to evaluate discovery and trial issues;
• Evaluated issues crucial to summary judgment and pre-trial motions and assessed the risks of
prevailing on each of Lead Plaintiff’s claims at trial; and,
• Prepared for trial against three bank defendants covering dozens of complex transactions and
had the case virtually “trial ready,” having filed the Joint Pretrial Order, when the case was
stayed.
5. Concurrent with our diligent prosecution through the investigation, briefing complex
issues and formal discovery, we applied tremendous skill and experience in negotiating each of the
settlements. The challenges to obtaining any significant recovery cannot be overstated. Enron was
bankrupt. Andersen went out of business due to the criminal proceedings against it. The federal
government seized assets of insiders who pled or were convicted. The directors and officers
insurance was a “wasting” asset, largely consumed by defense costs. The only defendants with the
wherewithal to pay – the banks – argued at every opportunity that they could not be held liable for
their allegedly fraudulent acts under Central Bank. The Court dismissed Deutsche Bank and,
ultimately, the Fifth Circuit agreed with the nonsettling bank defendants about Central Bank.
Nonetheless, prior to the Fifth Circuit’s class certification opinion – an opinion that said our core
theory was legally flawed and prevented class certification – we obtained over $7.2 billion for the
Class. A summary of the recoveries follows:
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