- 39 -
were reliable, and that he had been "comfortable" with the bill
of sale he issued to each partnership. Petitioners have now
essentially acknowledged to be untrue these earlier factual
assertions that Mr. Barnes and Mr. Hoyt made concerning the
reliability of the bills of sale. Petitioners state that the
bills of sale contained many "errors" and have offered in
evidence corrected bills of sale for the partnerships.
In addition, the Court finds incredible and unworthy of
belief petitioners' suggestion that Mr. Barnes and Mr. Hoyt (who
were both experienced businessmen and longtime breeders of
purebred livestock) had unknowingly participated in the issuance
of unreliable sales documents evidencing the specific breeding
sheep these partnerships purportedly purchased. The Court
further does not believe that, over the long period from about
1981, when RCR #1 and Barnes Ranches entered into the first
transaction, through the time of the trial in the instant cases,
Mr. Barnes and Mr. Hoyt had been unaware of the many problems
with these bills of sale. Mr. Barnes and his son Randy managed
each partnership's "breeding sheep", and the sharecrop agreement
each partnership and Barnes Ranches concurrently entered provided
the Barnes family was to maintain sufficient records allowing a
partnership's "breeding sheep" to be identified at all times.
This contractual requirement was never complied with given the
considerable difficulty petitioners now have in identifying the
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