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services to petitioner. These two formulas advanced by
respondent's experts awarded Kleindienst a 5-percent marketing
commission on escrows she solicited but petitioner reassigned.
Brooks stated that he may pay an employee more if she solicited
a substantial portion of escrow revenues as Kleindienst did.
Without Kleindienst, petitioner would have far fewer clients and
would most likely be unsuccessful. However, Brooks did not take
this into account when determining Kleindienst's compensation.
Brooks explained that the nature of the escrow industry means
that an employer loses clients when any employee leaves.
Brooks' explanation does not justify ignoring or diminishing the
value of the significant contribution that Kleindienst made to
petitioner by soliciting the large majority of its escrow
clients.
In addition to providing the compensation formulas, Haas
also provided corporate officer compensation as a percentage of
gross receipts for 28 independent escrow firms. The average
percentage was 22 percent during the years in issue. Haas
stated that most of these corporate officers also worked as
escrow officers, and Haas used the total compensation received
for both the executive and escrow duties to calculate the
percentage. Haas also provided specific examples of the
compensation paid to shareholder-employees of two independent
escrow firms. In both firms, the shareholder worked as a
corporate officer and escrow officer. Although we can compare
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