The Orlando law firm of Moran & Shams P.A. announced that two of its shareholders are leaving and the firm's name will change.

Maurice "Mo" Shams and Sidney Shams are departing amicably, the firm says.

The 14-attorney commercial law firm, renamed Moran Kidd Lyons Johnson & Berkson P. A., will remain at 111 N. Orange Ave., Suite 1200.

Meanwhile, the Shams have set up a new law firm in Maitland, to be called the Shams Law Firm, at 1015 Maitland Center Commons Blvd., Suite 110.

A joint statement by the Orlando firm and the Shams says the two attorneys are leaving to focus on their business, tax, estate and real estate practice.

"In light of the longstanding personal friendships and mutual respect of all of the firm's shareholders, the transition has been amicable and cooperative," says the statement.

The New York-based company told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it believes the lawsuit related to its previously announced offering of convertible preferred shares was without merit.

Enron's demise wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.

Tuesday's turndown for the Enron investors came without comment in a routine Supreme Court list of cases the justices had decided not to hear.

The chances that Enron shareholders can recover some money dimmed a week ago with the Supreme Court's decision against investors in a separate suit. It alleged that two suppliers doing business with a cable TV company engaged in securities fraud.

That suit was politically sensitive for the Bush administration because of its potential to affect the Enron case. The administration sided with the business community against investors, despite the recommendation of the Securities and Exchange Commission to side with the investors. It was left to attorneys general from 30 states to support shareholders in the case against the cable TV suppliers.

The justices ruled that the investors in Charter Communications Inc. did not have the right to sue because they did not rely on the deceptive acts of the suppliers.

The same principle could apply to the Enron case, where investors relied on Enron's glowing description of its business, but were arguably unaware of any deceptive conduct by the investment banks.

Lawyers for Enron investors say the circumstances in the two cases are not comparable.

In the Enron suit, stockholders are accusing Wall Street investment banks of colluding with the energy company to hide its losses.

To date, Enron plaintiffs have settled for $7.3 billion from several financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Enron stockholders are seeking more than $30 billion from Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston and Barclays Bank PLC.

The investment banks, say Enron investors, schemed with the energy company, scheming with Enron by entering into partnerships and transactions that enabled the energy company to take liabilities off its books, recording revenue from the deals when it was actually incurring debt.

Now that the Supreme Court has rejected the case, "I think that the chances of succeeding on a scheme liability theory are nearly zero; the resolution of this Enron case was made clear by the decision" last week against investors in the cable TV suppliers suit, said attorney Greg Markel, who represents corporate clients in securities fraud lawsuits.

Last March, the appeals court in New Orleans reversed a decision by U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon in Houston, who had said Enron shareholders could sue as a class.

The issue of certifying a class is a critical one. Once the courts allow huge numbers of investors to pursue a securities fraud lawsuit, the defendants almost always settle rather than exposing their corporations to potentially catastrophic liability.

The appeals court decision in the Enron case meant that shareholders and investors could not pool their resources to sue as a group. Lawyers for Enron investors estimate the class size at over 1 million shareholders.

Enron Corp., once the nation's seventh-largest company, crumbled into bankruptcy in December 2001. The failure became a symbol of the corporate scandals that rocked Wall Street early this decade.

The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3.5 percent, its biggest in more than 23 years. But markets paused only momentarily before the selling wave renewed as investors seem fixated on the idea that the U.S. will drag the world economy down.

"Incoming information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets," the Fed said. Canada's central bank cut too.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he was confident in the resilience of the U.S. and global economies and welcomed the Fed cut as a helpful move.

"This is very constructive and I think it shows this country and the rest of the world that our central bank is nimble and can move quickly in response to market conditions," Paulson said.

The White House, rushing to put together a $150 billion stimulus package to prop up an economy ravaged by a housing slump and a mortgage defaults crisis, declined immediate comment on the Fed cut.

President George W. Bush was set to meet members of Congress later in the day to discuss the economic rescue package.

Outside North America, politicians and central bankers said the market selloff looked excessive. But they had their work cut out to convince as people like billionaire investor George Soros, who said the world faced a financial crisis worse than any since World War Two.

Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc., which is owned by Deutsche Telecom, asked the justices to overturn the ruling. They said in court papers that state and local governments try to "hide" taxes and fees by barring carriers from listing them as separate items, requiring the companies instead to fold them in with the rest of their charges.

Consumer advocates, who support the lower court's ruling, responded that wireless companies frequently add a confusing array of charges that are not always the result of government taxes. Such complaints led the Federal Communications Commission to extend "truth in billing" rules to cell phones in 2005.

The legal question in dispute is whether the FCC was correct when it ruled in 2005 that federal law prohibits the states from barring separate line items. Federal communications law bars state regulation of rates but allows states to regulate "other terms and conditions" of service.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the FCC in 2006, ruling that line items on bills were "other terms and conditions" that states could prohibit. The justices' decision Tuesday allows that ruling to stand.

The issue is not completely settled, however. The Justice Department's Solicitor General, the Bush administration's lawyer, urged the court to turn down the case, even though the Solicitor General disagreed with the appeals court's ruling.

That's because the appeals court sent the case back to the FCC, and the agency is considering additional grounds for preempting state regulation of the wireless industry, the Solicitor General said. As a result, the issue is not yet ripe for Supreme Court review, the Solictor General said.

De Beers, the world's largest diamond importer, settled a class action lawsuit Monday worth $297 million, which would be divided roughly in half between consumers and diamond merchants and resellers.

The lawsuit charged that De Beers and its subsidiaries violated antitrust, unfair competition and consumer-protection laws by monopolizing diamond supplies, and conspired to control the diamond prices by fixing and raising them as per their discretion.

The South African company, which controls 40 percent of the world's diamond trade. was also charged with false advertising.

Under the settlement, De Beers would pay $22.5 million to the "direct purchaser class members and $272.5 million to "indirect purchaser class members."

Consumers who purchased diamonds from De Beers directly or indirectly between 1994 and 2006 will be eligible to receive a rebate. The rebate amount will be determined based on the quality of the diamond.

The case is being heard in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey. The next hearing in the case is set for April 14.