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Thereafter, the plaintiffs sought attorneys' fees, and the
District Court awarded attorneys' fees and costs to all the
plaintiffs in the Farmers lawsuit, and not just to DCI.
Respondent points to the following language in the District
Court's opinion to support her position that the District Court
awarded all of the lost profits damages to DCI and did not award
any portion of those damages to the Diamonds as the owners of
ETS:
Deducting the above costs and overhead items of
$1,514,929.52 from the $3,011,945.03 total additional
revenue that Diamond Claims would have received if
Farmers had not breached their investigation services
contract, I find that Diamond Claims' lost profits for
the period 1981-1985 were $1,497,015.51.
We acknowledge that the foregoing language in the District
Court's opinion, standing alone, appears to lend support to
respondent's position. However, that language does not stand
alone and should not be read in a vacuum without regard to all
the other relevant facts relating to the District Court's award
in the Farmers lawsuit that we have found. We believe that the
reason that the District Court referred to the lost profits
damages as "Diamond Claims' lost profits" is that it relied on
and adopted Mr. Wharton's approach that was reflected in his
testimony at the damages hearing and in Analysis 1 of treating
ETS as a division of DCI for purposes of calculating the lost
profits damages to be awarded to the plaintiffs in the Farmers
lawsuit. Mr. Wharton testified at that hearing that, in deter-
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