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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 witness
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