Lawyers For California Doubt Effect Of Enron Memos

Though California majesty officials crowed over the Enron memos free this week outlining questionable strategies for soaked profits from the electricity sell here, condition lawyers said that the papers would perhaps have only a modest and indirect stimulate on their pains to win refunds from the energy generators.

Ever since nation prices rocketed out of sway in 2000 and then especially early last year, California has struggled both to attain federal help in capping prices and to compel the generators to send what the shape has said are billions of dollars of overcharges.

So far, the grandeur's claims that at slightest some of the generators and brawn traders manipulated the advertise and unjustly took lead of shortages they fabricated have bent no substantial refunds, and California has had to convey billions of dollars in overheads for import license at overblown prices, harming Gov. Gray Davis politically.

The grandeur lawyers now say that though the memos by Enron's lawyers have produced an ability biased bonus, their actual provoke on litigation will not be important or, in many of the suits that have been filed, pertinent at all.

For order, Bill Lockyear, the stately attorney common, has filed 12 civil suits against six companies seeking at least $10 billion in refunds. Nevertheless Enron is not even on that listing, not yet besides.

The public has been seeking trading papers from Enron for months and only newly won an incite order forcing the crowd to hand over the papers. Sandra Michioku, a spokeswoman for the attorney common, said that more suits could well be filed after the supplies were handed over. The serious information for an ensemble, however, will interest niceties on trading activities, she said.

The focus for the public's official strategy has been the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees the command markets. The nation has filed claims with the commission seeking $8.9 billion in refunds from the generators.

Erik Saltmarsh, the chief counsel to the disarray's Electricity Oversight Board, which is coordinating the litigation, said the new memos presented little more than some honorable and maybe following mass to the formal's claims. The problem will place or descend, he said, on mountains of souk records pieced together showing what the national has described as dishonest manipulation of the sell.

He said that Enron's descriptions of questionable trading strategies enclosed only one modest disclosure: a system Enron traders worn that reportedly created the illusion of congestion on control shape by pitiful ability back and onward across formal position.

"To me, the FERC is like a mother who doesn't want to judge their teenager has spent bad," Mr. Saltmarsh said. "The memos are significant because they are like decisions a diary in the kid's knapsack saying, `I robbed the liquor stow.' This may get the FERC to act."

He added: "The memos can help, but they're not enough. The facts are what's dangerous."

One lawyer, Michael Aguirre, took a different inspect. He has filed two suits against the influence generators, one for the lieutenant manager and one for state patrons. The suits request $40 billion in absolute, but only the moment, for clients, names Enron.

Mr. Aguirre said that he thought the Enron memos would be critical in establishing bad belief on the part of the band, a statement that could be far more important in swaying a jury than masses of trading figures.

"This is the kind of evince you pray for," he said.