US Supreme Court Vacates Andersen Verdict

[Tigger_Magic]

No: Better that those who did something wrong get punished, and the others are not punished.

If life were so consummately equitable to all people, I would not have lost my job a few years ago, lost thousands of dollars in salary & benefits, etc. But no one is guaranteed that life is going to always be just and equitable. It is not rational to expect that.

Mom has nothing to do with it and neither does perverted justice. Justice demands that only those who did something wrong get punished.

There you go again... why is it so difficult to understand that the trial was only the final straw for AA, not the proximate cause of their demise. They sowed the seeds of their own downfall for years with numerous clients, just like my former employer did. To point to the trial as the sole cause of AA's downfall is to blithely ignore the ample evidence that they willingly sacrificed their corporate integrity for the sake of a better bottom line.

And sometimes an irrational system causes bad things to happen to good people -- an irrational system that can be fixed by making those that distort or sensationalize accountable for the damage they cause.

Makes no sense to me why you continue to try to make the justice system a scapegoat in this. Admittedly, the trial was hardly a PR windfall for AA, but their problems had been brewing long before the trial began. Enron was simply an incredibly visible client with huge impact. Had it not been Enron, it would have been some other company. AA's demise was, unfortunately, as inevitable as my former employer's was. Once a company decides that corporate integrity can take a back seat to anything, its days are numbered.

 

[JoeEpcotRocks]

The fact is, in a large company, if upper management screws up or lacks integrity, then many, many innocent emoloyees will suffer because its only a matter of time before people the company fails. (Lucent here in IL is another example - although it did not fail completely, but had major downsizing.)

I suppose you could argue that without the courts involvement, AA may have survived. But, a great deal have jobs would have been lost as many, many clients would leave due to AA's obvious lack of integrity and big-time lapse of fiduciary responsibility (more than once). What CEO and company board wants to tell its stockholders that were sticking with AA anyway? Not much of an upside.

Based on my reading of the recent news accounts, the verdit reversals applies only to witness tampering & document destroying. Not much of a vindicaton - at all!

AA shot itself in the foot with a bazooka, and many innocent employees suffered from the blast. Don't blame the public. Don't blame the courts.

 

[bicker]

why is it so difficult to understand that the trial was only the final straw for AA, not the proximate cause of their demise.

Don't mistake my disagreeing with any alleged lack of understanding.

My concerns have nothing to do with the cause of anything other than the cause of the demand for blood, which often results in injustice in our society. If you can propose an acceptable justification for irrational mob behavior, then I'll set aside my rant. In the meanwhile, I'm unwilling to accept such a societal ill without trying to change it by highlighting it as I am.

They sowed the seeds of their own downfall for years

Not the folks I'm talking about.

Perhaps the confusion is with respect to what we're each talking about. I'm talking about the overreaction and irrational behavior of the general public that led to the downfall of a company instead of the conviction of people who actually did something wrong. (That same irresponsible collective behavior keeps almost everyone who is actually qualified to run the country from running for office, which is why we end up with yahoos like Clinton and Bush. So it's not an isolated transgression.)

Makes no sense to me why you continue to try to make the justice system a scapegoat in this.

There is no scapegoating here. There is real blame for real reprehensible collective behavior.

 

[JoeEpcotRocks]

Don't mistake my disagreeing with any alleged lack of understanding.

My concerns have nothing to do with the cause of anything other than the cause of the demand for blood, which often results in injustice in our society. If you can propose an acceptable justification for irrational mob behavior, then I'll set aside my rant. In the meanwhile, I'm unwilling to accept such a societal ill without trying to change it by highlighting it as I am.

Not the folks I'm talking about.

Perhaps the confusion is with respect to what we're each talking about. I'm talking about the overreaction and irrational behavior of the general public that led to the downfall of a company instead of the conviction of people who actually did something wrong. (That same irresponsible collective behavior keeps almost everyone who is actually qualified to run the country from running for office, which is why we end up with yahoos like Clinton and Bush. So it's not an isolated transgression.)

There is no scapegoating here. There is real blame for real reprehensible collective behavior.

I guess I (and some others) don't see the overreaction and irrational behavior of the general public in this particular case, nor as it being the cause leading to AA's downfall.

Again, I would say that AA was responsbile for its own downfall. And when a company falls due to bad management or lack of integrity, the guilty and (sadly) the innocent suffer.

 

[Tigger_Magic]

Don't mistake my disagreeing with any alleged lack of understanding.

My concerns have nothing to do with the cause of anything other than the cause of the demand for blood, which often results in injustice in our society. If you can propose an acceptable justification for irrational mob behavior, then I'll set aside my rant. In the meanwhile, I'm unwilling to accept such a societal ill without trying to change it by highlighting it as I am.

Not the folks I'm talking about.

Perhaps the confusion is with respect to what we're each talking about. I'm talking about the overreaction and irrational behavior of the general public that led to the downfall of a company instead of the conviction of people who actually did something wrong. (That same irresponsible collective behavior keeps almost everyone who is actually qualified to run the country from running for office, which is why we end up with yahoos like Clinton and Bush. So it's not an isolated transgression.)

There is no scapegoating here. There is real blame for real reprehensible collective behavior.

The public is not to blame for the fall of AA; AA management is to blame for that. AA cast aside both the appearance and actuality of its corporate integrity. The public did not force them to do that; AA chose on its own to mingle its auditing/accounting business with its consulting side. The drive to expand corporate profits drove some poor decisions at AA management, resulting in the expected public rejection of the company.

AA made informed decisions to sacrifice integrity for profit. The general public had nothing to do with that. Once the decision to mingle client's business was made, AA lit the fuse that led to the ultimate explosion (or implosion) of the company.

Blaming the public for what AA chose to do fails to recognize the necessity of corporate responsibility. This logic would give a blank check to any company to pursue any course of action, including illegal acts, allowing them to just blame the general public when they were caught.

 

[bicker]

The public is not to blame for the fall of AA; AA management is to blame for that.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that. I believe both the blood-thirsty quarters of the general public as well as Andersen management are to blame.

AA made informed decisions to sacrifice integrity for profit.

The nature of mob mentality is that decisions, as they are, aren't informed -- aren't even conscious.

Blaming the public for what AA chose to do fails to recognize the necessity of corporate responsibility.

Blaming management alone fails to recognize the culpability of us all in fostering the kind of societal behaviors that I've highlighted.

Nice chatting with you!