Another judge named to mediate lawsuits

The federal judges overseeing Enron Corp.'s bankruptcy and huge civil lawsuits Monday appointed a new mediator, an 83-year-old federal judge, to see if the company and some key parties can negotiate a settlement.

Senior U.S. District Judge William C. Conner, of White Plains, N.Y., was appointed mediator late Monday by U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon of Houston and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez of Manhattan. Conner, an appointee of Richard Nixon, will mediate with Enron and its creditors, a group of financial institutions and the shareholder and employee plaintiffs in the would-be class-action suits.

Harmon and Gonzalez first ordered these groups to another mediator, New York-based U.S. District Judge Kevin T. Duffy, in the case in late May. They withdrew Duffy's name a week later at his request. In the meantime, the financial institutions and the lead plaintiffs have suggested mediators but the judges picked someone else.

Conner is a Wichita Falls native who received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas in 1941 and 1942. He served as a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve during World War II and was appointed to the federal bench in 1974.

Conner has presided over a variety of cases, from anti-trust to securities fraud, and presided over litigation arising from New York City's 1970s fiscal crisis. He has also handled a number of media- and entertainment-related cases.

In 1991, he became one of the first federal judges to allow TV cameras in the courtroom when he let a crew tape a copyright dispute over photos of the late actor James Dean.

Ideally, a mediator could help broker deals to resolve the civil and bankruptcy cases that have already eaten up hundreds of millions of dollars in legal bills.

These negotiations could also postpone the inevitable clashes as the two giant civil cases move into discovery. The parties in the civil cases, the bankruptcy and even the Enron Task Force prosecutors are likely to vie for control of the questioning of the witnesses, suspects and defendants.

The mediation is not binding, and what is discussed there cannot be used back in the courtroom. To streamline matters, most of the defendants are not required parties to these talks.

The financial groups ordered to mediation are J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch & Co., Barclays PLC, Lehman Brothers Holding, UBS Paine Webber and UBS Warburg, LLC, Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs.

There is currently no working scheduling order or trial date in the shareholder and employee class-action lawsuits.