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After the Guilty Plea

By Robert Plotkin

The onslaught of guilty pleas in post-Enron financial fraud cases has created new challenges for defense attorneys in the parallel civil litigation that inevitably accompanies criminal charges. Attorneys for the civil plaintiffs are quick to strike as soon as the guilty pleas are disclosed, demanding that the pleading defendant provide the documents and testimony previously denied to them by the invocation of the Fifth Amendment, and seeking to collect a prompt judgment.

While numerous articles have analyzed strategy in parallel civil proceedings where defendants have not yet been criminally convicted, or even indicted, the civil defense of the cooperating guilty pleader has been less examined. The operating assumptions are that the pleading individual either forfeits or waives Fifth Amendment rights and therefore faces immediate discovery, and that the defendant is collaterally estopped from contesting liability. This article explores these assumptions.

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