- 55 - A This particular bill was actually never mailed to the client. Mr. Switkay and I were going back and forth on some things and I had sent him this bill. I had never actually looked at what the billing rate was on it. Sometime in -- I think it was probably even this summer, we re-ran this same bill and when we ran the bill the time frames went considerably beyond this. I think the last time slip on this one is November of '93. They went into '94 and the '94 time slips had the 225 on them, so the discrepancy picked up between the two of the time rates, the 225 and 150 an hour. We then went back in and adjusted the slips that had the wrong billable rate on them, and when we actually submitted a bill to the client we submitted it with the proper billable rate. Q So the document was a mere draft? A It was a draft for our discussions with the Internal Revenue Service. At that point we were talking about a settlement of the entire issue. This was a draft and it also had on it some notations about projected additional time and things of that nature. We do not credit Tupitza's testimony. Having observed him as a witness and after having thoroughly reviewed all the evidence, we are convinced that Tupitza agreed to charge the estate $150 per hour for his legal services, and we so find. During the last day of trial, the Court briefly examined Exhibit 47 and noted that the Tupitza law firm had billed the estate $115,535 for legal services allegedly performed by Scott. When the parties informed the Court that they had no further evidence to submit at trial, the Court called Scott as a witnessPage: Previous 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 Next
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