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December 12, 2001

Enron Unplugged

Close Friend of Court
Goes Down In Flames 

The Texas Supreme Court justices’ single largest source of corporate donations has collapsed in a pile of investor fraud and deception—and some of the wreckage could end up back before the court.

To break up utility monopolies and revolutionize how electricity flows into sockets, Enron had to amass enormous influence in local, state and federal governments. In its home state, Enron wielded extraordinary clout in all three branches of government.

Texas High Court justices have taken $134,058 from Enron’s PAC and executives since 1993. During this time, Enron was a party to six petitions for review. The court accepted two of the three petitions brought by Enron (66 percent) and denied all three petitions brought by its adversaries (100 percent). This is an incredible record in a court that accepts 11 percent of all petitions.
 

Enron Money To Current Justices
Justice Enron Contributions
Harriet O'Neill $33,908
Nathan Hecht $25,000
Tom Phillips $12,250
Priscilla Owen $8,600
Deborah Hankinson  $7,000
Craig Enoch $6,000
James Baker $4,600

In both Enron petitions that the High Court heard, the justices reversed lower appeals courts to rule in Enron’s favor. In 1996, Greg Abbott wrote a unanimous reversal of a lower court, which had ruled that Enron’s purchase of Tenneco’s interest in a gas plant violated the preferential purchase rights of the plant’s other owners (Tenneco v. Enterprise Products). This decision followed Enron v. Spring ISD, in which the court slashed $225,000 off the inventory taxes that an appeals court said Enron had to pay to the Spring school district. 

When investors learned in October that Enron lied about its finances for years, they drove the company’s stock into the ground, precipitating bankruptcy. Now Enron’s creditors, investors and employees are all filing lawsuits in state and federal courts to try to recover lost billions. Some of this wreckage eventually may fall upon Texas’ Supreme Court justices—who are more indebted to Enron than any other corporate donor. •

 

November Dollar Docket
Cases heard by the Texas Supreme Court in November
and the corresponding contributions to justices from
the parties and/or attorneys.*
 
November 6, 2001
Van Horn & Assoc Inc. v.
 $0
Tatom
$0

San Antonio Bd. Adjustment v. 
$0
Wende 
$250

TNRCC v. $196,222
Sierra Club
  $0

November 7, 2001
In re Haliburton $302,450

In re Allstate
$368,183

 
American Cyanamid Co. v.
$0
Geye
$0

 
November 14, 2001
State of TX. v.
$0
Gonzalez $155,899

Coastal Oil & Gas v.
$361,115
Coates Energy Trusts
$200

Texas A&M v.
$196,222
Lawson
$0

November 28, 2001
Bost v.
$2,190
Low Income Women
$19,958

 
Carpenter v.
$0
Cimarron Hydrocarbons Corp. $0

Travis County v. $0
Pelzel  Associates Inc. $0

Grand Total: $1,603,409

 

 


 
 

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