- 16 -
profits, as a promoter, would be the operation of the
Partnerships. Maxfield satisfied himself that "the general
partner had a real economic incentive to make these things work
if he was going to ever sell anymore of--of these things."
Maxfield visited PI in 1982 to see what it was like and "to
hear from some of the technical people there." Although
Maxfield's perspective was that of "a tax lawyer" and "not a
scientist", he thought that he "could at least listen, and if * *
* [he] had questions on their discussion, * * *[he] could ask
them." As Maxfield explained his understanding, the Sentinel EPE
recyclers would serve the following function:
The function served by these recycling machines
[was to grind and chemically condense the plastic
waste,] which would then be reformatted into plastic
pellets and sold * * *
They would simply tell the factory we have a way--
we will dispose of--of your waste products without
charging you anything. We will provide a machine that
you can use without any cost.
In fact, end-users were not provided Sentinel EPE recyclers
without cost; they bore the service and installation costs.
According to Maxfield, among the criteria required of potential
end-users was "the physical space in their factory to have * * *
[the] machine installed" and the willingness to "spend something-
-roughly $5,000 or $6,000, if necessary, for the wiring of the
machine." Maxfield testified that he thought that there were
"thousands and thousands and thousands" of potential end-users
for the recycler.
Page: Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NextLast modified: May 25, 2011