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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (93450)	12/8/2001 2:43:13 PM
From: JHP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

they better have billions and billions!<NG> this states $130 million for THREE lawsuits! <<The following is a restatement of the information in the two Form 8-K filings we made earlier this week. December 4, 2001 Halliburton announced that on November 29, 2001, a Texas district court in Orange, Texas entered a judgment against its subsidiary, Dresser Industries, Inc., on a $65 million jury verdict rendered in September 2001 in favor of five plaintiffs following a trial of several weeks. Dresser believes that the trial court committed numerous errors, including the application of Alabama law and its evidentiary rulings during the trial. Additionally, the trial court denied Dresser the right to present evidence that the alleged illnesses of the plaintiffs were not caused by Dresser products, but instead could have been caused by the products of other companies which had previously settled with the plaintiffs. Dresser intends to appeal this judgement and believes that the trial evidence did not support the verdict and that its legal defenses will result in judgment on appeal in Dresser's favor. The same district court also entered three additional judgments against Dresser in the aggregate amount of $35.7 million in favor of 100 other asbestos plaintiffs. These judgments related to an alleged breach of purported settlement agreements signed earlier this year by a New Orleans lawyer hired by Harbison-Walker Refractories Company, which had been defending Dresser pursuant to the agreement by which Harbison-Walker was spun-off by Dresser in 1992. These settlement agreements purportedly bind Harbison-Walker Refractories Company as the obligated party, not Dresser. Dresser intends to appeal these three judgements on the grounds that it was not a party to the settlement agreements and it did not authorize anyone to settle on its behalf. Dresser believes that these judgments are contrary to applicable law and that its appeal will be successful. December 7, 2001 Halliburton announces that on December 5, 2001, a jury in Baltimore, Maryland returned verdicts against its subsidiary, Dresser Industries, Inc., and other defendants following a trial of several weeks involving asbestos claims. Each of five plaintiffs alleged exposure to Harbison-Walker Refractories products. Dresser's portion of the verdicts totals $30 million. Dresser believes that the trial court committed numerous errors, and that the trial evidence did not support the verdicts. Dresser intends to challenge the verdicts by post trial motion and, if those motions are not successful, to pursue an appeal aggressively. Halliburton, founded in 1919, is the world's largest provider of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries. The company serves its customers with a broad range of products and services through its Energy Services Group and Engineering and Construction Group business segments. The company's World Wide Web site can be accessed at halliburton.com .>> biz.yahoo.com

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (93450)	12/8/2001 4:49:05 PM
From: JHP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Mike could this be true? <<Weigh carefully the words of the credit agency report which downgraded HAL to BBB-, the lowest investment grade, on Friday: "We have never seen a company with siginificant asbestos exposure climb out of the water." >>

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (93450)	12/8/2001 5:02:52 PM
From: JHP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Mike keep your guns handy some of these bad guys may be in your neighood>G< Executive Flight Risk? Saturday December 8, 11:07 am Eastern Time Freeze Sought on Enron Executives' Assets By Jeff Franks HOUSTON (Reuters) - Attorneys for a bank suing bankrupt energy trader Enron Corp. (NYSE:ENE - news) asked a federal judge to freeze $1.1 billion in assets belonging to Enron executives on grounds they could flee the country with the money. U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal put off ruling on the matter until later this month, saying she wanted more written arguments from both sides. Amalgamated Bank, which manages worker retirement funds, has charged that 29 Enron executives and members of the board of directors pocketed $1.1 billion in insider trades in recent years when the company allegedly artificially inflated earnings to jack up the stock price. Amalgamated attorney Bill Lerach told Rosenthal his clients had lost more than $10 million in the collapse of Enron and hoped to get some of it back from the now-wealthy Enron executives. He said a freeze on their $1.1 billion would help his clients and those in an estimated 60 other shareholder lawsuits recover their losses. Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday after a last-ditch buyout by rival Dynegy Inc. fell through, capping off a stunning corporate collapse that began in October with the disclosure that questionable business deals had been done with outside partnerships run by company executives. MASSIVE CONSPIRACY ALLEGED Stock in what was once the nation's largest energy trader has fallen from a high of $90 last year to $0.75 a share on Friday. Lerach outlined what he alleged was a massive conspiracy of fraud and greed in the executive suites of the Houston-based company. ``There was fraud at the top, fraud by the board,'' he charged in arguments before a courtroom packed with lawyers. ''It's worse than any civil fraud case we've ever seen.'' He said former Enron chief executive Jeff Skilling, who resigned in August after just six months on the job, had gone to Brazil and that former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, who left the company in October, may have flown to Israel via Canada. ``I don't want to accuse people of being a flight risk, but I do want to suggest it could be more than an academic exercise in this case,'' he said. Attorneys for the two former executives said they were both in the U.S. and not about to leave. They said an asset freeze was unnecessary because there had been no wrongdoing. ``To suggest there's a flight risk borders on ridiculous,'' said Jeffrey Kilduff, attorney for Skilling. Fastow's attorney, Craig Smyser, said no one could feel worse about Enron's fate than his client. ``Mr. Fastow is as distraught as anyone else over the tragic demise of Enron,'' he told Rosenthal. Enron said in a recent regulatory filing that Fastow got $30 million in the murky deals that contributed to Enron's end.