and here i would like to give you a little background on this case it began back in sixteen and i was not the original lawyer on it but george wood was representing the defendant here and i think mr storms has been the lawyer for the plaintiff throughout this case so that gives you a little bit of the procedural history back in the trial court when the case began continued on there were three main issues that i saw in the case and that were litigated to a certain extent the st issue in the trial court was whether or not the land trust violated the rule against perpetuities and to me that was the big big issue in the case in the beginning at least through the st appeal your honor  issue was at the trial level whether or not there can be a partition of the land trust and then as the court no doubt knows and real estate lawyers know you can't partition a valid land trust so the key as far as a plaintiff was concerned in this case at trial level was the plaintiff had to prevail on the rule against perpetuities to wage a good attack on the land trust and partition the same so in other words if the plaintiff prevailed at trial court on the rule against permit duties issue it was no doubt going to prevail on the partition that would be kind of a slam dunk so the defend that had to vigorously defend against the rule against perpetuities at the trial level in order to prevent a partition by the trial court your honor also at the trial level there was an issue which i would say as a collateral issue that was the issue of reimbursement for fees  at the trial level to recoup those fees in the course of the proceedings it was necessary in my opinion to file a petition to increase those fees and amend the counter claim for fees which the defendant did file however the court at trial and before did not allow the amendment so on the issue of maintenance fees we went to trial and the court did give us an award but it was less than what we had anticipated so after everything was ruled on at the trial level and i think we went up on three o four i filed a notice of appeal to appeal those three issues now i will say to the court in my and the issue of whether or not there is going to be a partition the case came up on appeal in number four dash nineteen dash three hundred and eighty two and  we had oral argument roughly more than a year ago and the court took the case on appeal and the defend won two out of the three issues the defendant prevailed your honor on the rule against perpetuities because as this court probably realizes there is a saving statute which makes it very hard to violate today the rule against  when the case was remanded the defend filed a petition for attorney's fees under the partition statute and we had a contested hearing on that  however the trial court only granted the defendants a partial amount of attorney's fees in the sum of thirteen thousand six hundred and five dollars so that resulted in the nd appeal which is why we're here today your honor so to recap this thing i think throughout the trial of this case and appeal of this case the number one appeal there are three major issues as i said the perfect to appease the partition issues and the reimbursement of fees for the upkeep the premises in question however as i said earlier the why and share in my opinion and the record i think shows this is that more than two thirds of the attorneys fees time for the defendant was spent on the st two issues rule against bertha two it is partition now i think the trial court was under the impression that we were only entitled as the prevailing party on the partition suit to attorney's fees on the st partition suit only and denied it defend as fees on the issue of the rule against perpetuities which was a collateral issue however as a noted earlier the defense had to win the rule against perpetuities issue because if we lost that or the defense the case was over we were done and mr sorenson would no doubt prevail on his part titian as he did at the trial level so the kind of  the defense would be entitled to a fee of about fifty six thousand dollars and some change and i think that would be very generous to the plaintiff because i think a less than one rd of our time was spent on the issues of reimbursement and the mending the pleadings i was a smaller issue so i think at a minimum the defenders would be entitled to about fifty six thousand dollars here in this case and attorney's fees because as the plaintiff pointed out in his brief and i commend him the decision of bailey versus bailey which we both cited i think holes that the fact that the defendants were proven to employ counsel with respect to the collateral issues does not bar apportionment fees so in other words what mayle is saying here fees bailey by the way is a th district decision that came out of this court years ago so under the rationale of bailey i believe that the defendant would be entitled to at least two thirds of his attorney's fees here and we would ask the court so to hold so i think i probably used up all my time now so i want to thank you again for having us argue this is the st time i've ever been asking that this court affirmed the trial court's award of attorney's fees basically for three reasons the st reason is that the defendant did not present sufficient evidence in the trial court from which the trial court could have awarded more feeds than the fees that were in fact awarded nd base is that the trial court properly refused to award fees for the declaratory judgment action which is the rule against perpetuities issue where we tried to dissolve the land trust on the basis that it violated the rule against perpetuities that was not part of the partition act and i'll address the issue of of its relationship to the partition act in a few moments and then the  issue is that we believe that the defendant forfeited his appeal by failing to cite relevant authorities by failing most importantly to cite to the evidence submitted to the trial court on the feed petition  the issue so this record your honour's we would argue in an urge this court to find that the trial court this court has no basis to determine that the trial court abused it  there is no citation in the fugitive to the exhibits the fee statements that were submitted to the to the trial court they're not it appended to the brief as part of the appendix  mr beale is doing to this court what he did to the trial court which is he's throwing all of his fees in front of the court and asking this court to sort them out on his behalf just as he asked the trial court to do and that is not proper and if he is claiming that the trial court abused its discretion in awarding only thirteen thousand six hundred dollars my belief five dollars in legal fees then he needs to point to the record of the few statements that were admitted into evidence and where in those exhibits there is support for a higher fee award and he has failed to do that so for that reason our st argument is that  statements were blot bills we've identified in our response where he has made large block bills and we've cited authority for this court that large but billing does not support an award attorney's fees he has to be specific and there are large time entries both in the trial court and for work on the appeal where he simply said work on brief or work on a single issue and he's got multiple hours of assigned to that and it's impossible to determine from that time entry whether the time entry relates to the counterclaim or the declaratory judgment action or the partition action and that was one of the main reasons is the trial court identified in its order why the trial court determined in awarded the amount of fees that it did the rd issue that i'd like to address and it's the final issue is that the trial court properly refused to award legal fees for the declaratory judgment action which was the argument that the land trust violated the rule against perpetuities and therefore should be terminated and then the leasehold interest that the partition action was not filed until after the declaratory judgment action was decided and determined so in contrast to the bailey case where you have these issues that are going along in a parallel track and the court awarded fees for the collateral issue under the partition act because they were they were right riding on the same traps in this case the  declaratory judgment action the rule against perpetuities issue was decided by the trial court before the partition action was filed it was only after the partition i'm sorry after the declaratory action was decided that the partition action was filed and in fact mr bailey sided three or four a finding of the court's ruling on the declaratory judgment action and certainly i foolishly now in hindsight resistant to that because if i had agreed to that and that issue gone up on appeal at that time before we filed the partition action and had been presumably and undoubtedly it would have been reversed as this court did ultimately there would have been no right to attorney's fees under the partition act so that was the basis for the trial court deciding not to award the legal fees incurred in the in the declaratory judgment action but even  if the two claims had proceeded on the same track at the same time the trial court would not have abused discretion in this instance in refusing to award legal fees for the declaratory judgment action because of the blo billing nature of the work the judge rejected all of george wood's legal fees rejected large sections of mr billy's legal fees on the basis that those  words we knew that if we failed on the rule against perpetuities issue then he was going to get his partition that was just a slam dunk so we had to defend the religious fervor to it is vigorously or we would have everything now i do agree with counsel had we been allowed to do our three or four appeal early in the case at trial level on the rule against burger to choose only we wouldn't be sitting here today because then i would have been entitle any attorney's fees but they took it a step further after he had his victory at trial level on the rule against perpetuities and filed his partition so i think that's what triggers all the fees in this case because we had to resist the rule against perpetuities and we did it correctly because of the savings statute were not for the saving statute on the rule against appellate court so i think that's all i have to say i thank you once again for letting me argue the case and we appreciate your consideration thank you counsel are there any questions i see