In another development, Democrats in Congress investigating the company attacked the credibility of a special committee of Enron directors expected to release a report this weekend on the complex partnership deals central to the company's demise.
That charge would not require a detailed deconstruction of the complex partnership transactions.
Unlike the complex partnerships and other entities that Enron used to move debt and losses on outside investments off its books, this unit was a real business with more than 1,000 employees and customers like J. C. Penney.
In some cases, the same firms that privately sold shares in the complex partnerships that Enron kept off its balance sheet also lent Enron money and recommended Enron's stock and bonds to the public.
And considering the complex partnerships that run the islands, with players ranging from the city to the state to the federal government to environmentalists to island advocates, it is rather amazing that anything has been done at all.
Thus, instead of a power-based description of the physician-patient (family) relationship as either paternalistic or autonomous, this relationship is best viewed as a complex partnership in which power has no place.
Mr. Lay's brief appearance will be followed by testimony from William C. Powers Jr., the dean of the University of Texas School of Law, who reported this month that Mr. Lay "bears significant responsibility" for complex partnership deals that helped bring Enron down.
Meanwhile, European laws developed more varied and complex partnership and corporate forms, allowing larger and more adaptable ventures.
Since then, the company's politically tinged media business has ballooned, but its finances are often opaque because of complex partnership agreements.
The complex partnership between the men began in 1992 when Mr. Malone sought to take control of Silver King Communications, which owned television broadcast stations.
