worth that much i do know for she has to hold on to this judgment the district court had to rewrite the contract in this case louisiana law as it applies to this case and the facts of this case as we point in our brief the district court had to rewrite the contract by adding the word direct in front of the access on these issues to of direct access to the court as opposed to our client not merely acting as a conduit as specifically laid out in the paragraph eleven of the contract the district court then had to rewrite the law on the prompt payment act because the district because although it's a pay when pay situation when we're paid we have to material and or was it a mistake or it was the whole crux of the de lay claim what our contract said was we were merely the conduit we would never be responsible for the lay damages they would provide us the material we would present to the core we would send any questions back there's ad nauseum testimony about it and it's covered in all the briefing we with the conduct that's the way we provide access he added and the requests of coun they argued no no that meant direct contact that we had to facilitate some kind of meeting with the court asked the man point blank what document what narrative was did you present that did not get present to the core i'm not aware that his testimony you know at the end of the day to show how important it is to us and to him that we present everything this was a federal contract we would have gotten a fifteen percent markup on anything we could have gotten him paid for in fact on one of the delay claims he did get paid two hundred five thousand dollars on the delay claim he didn't get paid a substantial amount of money we would have got more we did everything we could to get more money and if you look at paragraph eleven it says we will never be liable for the court's decision is final our job was to to present it to the court in the court did what they did and i understand he was upset with it he chose to sue us forty to not su or he did not to the core pretty issues but we provided everything we could to the coup and the judge rewrote the contract to add the word direct access they also put on an expert who had never worked a court job in his life and he came up with this notion that well it's a claim that the contractors entitle to be in the room about there's nothing about that in the contract that we have to provide access for some claim so yes the district court added the word direct on the pro pay when pay situation when we are paid we have to pay him within two weeks or provide notice why we did not we did not provide notice for six weeks and then he isn't titled for what he put he put on evidence that we received in august of two thousand and twelve one hundred twenty seven thousand dollars of his of money for him plus money for us that money was paid in two thousand and fifteen but more importantly what the could district court did was fifteen percent of that amount is i forget eighteen thousand dollars a quarter allowed to drift toward sixty six thousand dollars and additionally much a much more painful by that date tobar two thousand and fifteen more than a year before the door about a year before the trial when that money was paid to the court that awarded tourney fees on everything not just that hundred twenty seven thousand dollars and already been paid but trial and to say trials an understatement because we had were trial settings in this case and went up within a week of trial each time when some bizarre thing would happen and we'd get bumped the last of which was the bat ruse to rachel rainstorms that bumped our trial date and it was all understandable but anybody knows that when you're preparing a case for trial that's when you spend a disproportionate amount of money and they were awarded one hundred thirty thousand dollars of attorney fees most of which took place long after that hundred twenty seven thousand dollars had been paid fifty or i c s was obligated to pay for the flag the only way r c s is not obligated to report it to pay for the flag win is if you rewrite the contract to say west coast one specific change or one that's not in dispute or c s was awarded eight additional days to complete the contract and they were given eight thousand dollars for the flagman during those eight additional days it was an r c s expense it takes issue and says well no somebody from f h passion nonparty they told us they were going to take care first of all they're not party but second even more importantly when you read the transcript as he cited it those conversations took place before the contract was signed when the contract was signed in august of two thousand and ten those conversations aren't taking place and that line item is here's line item fifty  responsibility or c s my case was mainly made through their expert when we went we went through painstakingly went through the daily logs and always she has would disappear for weeks if not months at a time and he had no explanation for that as there is no explanation for that and so what we did is we took an overhead amount of the daily overhead account and we backed charged him for the hundred eleven days that he disappeared this is before the end of the contract when he simply failed to complete the contract when he failed to complete the contract it took us one hundred twenty days to complete it and i'll explain why in a second but i want to put that number in context the original contract was only supposed to take one hundred twenty days the excess the extra time took us one hundred twenty days to complete the specific cost of the overhead were not that significant the as built drawings the certification but it's very difficult to do as bill drawings when you've already paved over the bypass valve so these things took us time it took us time to complete the punch list that his own expert acknowledged he never completed that his own expert knowledge was a breach of the country's like a walking off who is so he would not be deprived unless we paid him these tremendous amounts of money that he ultimately asked a jury for would not provide the certifications we can't get paid until we provide these things to the army corps of connected or something oh yes at the beginning of the job the issue was it's a bypass valve so was it was it secured or was it it was in a slip valves when you run water pressure through it could it just pop out the belief was absolutely these were slit bows and they need to be reinforced with concord mr alonzo believe that everybody believed that but we're dealing with the army corps of engineers you cannot accept that and mr merrick testified to this you could not accept that as a fact until you uncovered the specific valve that they were there to examine the fact that they knew the valve just upstream was not was not reinforced is irrelevant t required that that specific valve be uncovered to mobilize uncover the valve and as soon as they did in february of two thousand and eleven the corps said ok we've got to redesign the project because now we know that which we  also speculated and i apologize but this is the way the federal government sometimes works but now we know what was just what everybody knew now that we actually see it know it the coup that job needs to be redesigned so that there was a grand pecking order and who do certain work in favor of in this case but i think there were some favor made because unfortunately for r c s who've all became their subcontractor they paid who've all directly they have voiced my client who are who've also work and so when this took for the first time in forty years or something the river had risen so high they wanted everybody off away from the mississippi river starting may thirteenth i believe and the plans were not ready until until late into mid  september when they were finally approved and there's some emails that say hey we got you everything we want you want it on the redesigned account i think has taken some missions i know that was on everything that the lay claim the e mails are very clear those hadn't been dispute over just how much corps willing to pay i think they submitted invoices and wanted something in the neighborhood of three hundred eighty thousand dollars and they were given two hundred five thousand the court's decision is final we didn't get the additional hundred seventy five thousand dollars this is not a pay when paid situation again we would have gotten a markup from there we're more than happy for them to get three hundred eight thousand dollars but the core didn't give it to him who is decision is final and when you take that also to the prompt payment claim how could we be responsible for money we've never received from payment pain claim is essentially pay when paid those money was never received by us but that's part of the claim they were able to get the jury to provide them and the of flagman charges that the contractor makes them responsible for but the district court either ignored or the jury ignored but they which in to be responsible for and last but not least the one hundred eleven thousand dollars of back to the one problem you have is we don't know what when you put that into a blender we don't know how they came out with three hundred four thousand dollars because the four figures i just gave you are a lot closer to four hundred fifty thousand dollars but they pick the number three hundred four thousand dollars regardless one hundred twenty seven one hundred seventeen to eighty four those are cut and dry we're not responsible we're not responsible we're not responsible you can quibble over the hundred eleven but we presented evidence as to why we were entitled to back toward ford and they didn't the only attack they had on the evidence was well those those certifications didn't cost you that much money and and those as the drawings didn't cost you that much money ignoring the one hundred eleven days addition we were out there before that point in time and one hundred twenty days we were out there after that point in time and we only back charging for one hundred eleven days so it's those four issues and it's to the the extent the  attorneys fees and the sixty six thousand dollars of prop amun penalty is fifteen percent penalty which would be more like eighteen thousand i apologize and i have an exact thing let me ask you about the flag and where you sit down your are you saying whatever evidence that may have been of such discussions and possible changes predated the execution contract is the problem with that absolutely i think two things about that issue i'm saying first and foremost  the transcript in context those conversations took place he said take that out but it was eighteen so those conversations had to take place the poor it it's not that he said ignore that in the contract he said take that representative from work west coast corporation testified that all invoices for floggers were submitted to west coast corporation that they paid for the insurance that i did was removed s did not delay this project you will find that in the testimony in the record before but with that said the the flag was removed whether it was done by a was an exception it was literally just a little just another part of battery system or what he had seen there was a big huge project and this was one the exception given that's proximity to the mississippi river that's the only reason the corps was involved the corps had to accept and because they had to design a portion of the project which they did poorly the project was the project was design and r c s was they were doing the rest of the mean literally the roadway goes up rudely comes down and there's  supposed to as a conduit they were supposed to provide that information to the owner of the court the problem is and this is the most important thing about this case is west coast did not have access to the  they had no contact with the court they had misrepresented themselves to r c s in the beginning which the jury heard in the jury saw they had misrepresented in the very beginning that they had and they could provide access to the owner they could not they had a contract with garner services or services with the general was the general contractor on this project not weskits and just to clarify f h passion's is west coast is the parent company of west coast so whenever mr lowndes i was dealing with mr prosser at the beginning each passion's that's who he thought was going to be the general contractor that she represented that they were going to that they had the contract with the corps because they were working on the underlying project they subsequently let west coast r c s sell for so performed ninety nine point nine percent of the work on this project and when he speaks about the concerns at the end of the project the alleged breaches of contract all of that came after substantial completion of the project the project was ready and open to be used what r c s left on the table admitted that was three thousand dollars for some first change were that actually modified the scope of the contract and actually awarded any monies was not submitted to the board until after the r c s had substantially completed the work they suggest completed the work contract was as any general contractor would be would be look i'm hiring is mr contractor you're going to have you have by the contract you have to submit everything up to me you have to submit your payment application you have to submit your receipt and voicing whatever it is and then i'm going to turn around and i'm going to hand it to you the person that i have a contract with the court they did not have the contract they had a contract for services over here which was complete again did nothing else on the project they didn't have a contract with  guess the maybe turned around and head of the stuff off the court but the important just to get your question the importance of that is and the district court agreed is that once those could not provide the cock sets that and i believe that they probably pulled out from one of one of the one of the other hours brief when they just are the direct word it is completely immaterial access what they promised access is what they cannot  like the word conduit it's at a contractual word that they were going to be a conduit to the poor yes that in the contract there's a specifically in  the contractor and it's under this provision and if this provision merely acts as a conduit to broad subcontractor access to the owner which would mean the court to seek reimbursement for damages incurred for delays caused by the owner and its agents we knew that all the delays in this project submit change or the requests after the project sorry i mean that i mean under i would assume in their contract they had a temporal period where they had to also submit those requests when the court gets requests that are so delinquent of course they're not going to honor them or they're go blow them away at this point they're not submitted contemporaneous with the actual work being performed on the project again all stuff that was presented to the jury that r c s was not responsible for any of the delays he is an expert in scheduling he counted the days but for all of these other delays that were owner caused delays perseus would not have delayed did not delay the project  also we find it very almost disingenuous that they would suggest that the one hundred eleven days that it took them to complete the project after it was actually complete substantial completion was in july of two thousand and twelve they did not back towards r c s until march of two thousand and thirteen you know almost to hear later on at which point this was when ever mr along was knocking on the door saying hey where's the money that you owe me and it was an effort on their part to keep  paid r c s that money but they did not and now they come back eighteen months after the fact or several months after the fact and suggest that well we were holding up because we were going to back charg you didn't calculate this back charges until way down to the end of the project and those back charges again included nothing more than three thousand dollars to complete some punchless items which i recall correctly was like dirt on the side of the road or maybe some put on marking them as built in and work just to market to as best as not drawings are basically it's at the end of the project it's the contractor saying this is what we've done this is what we've built here and you can see it it's kind of had provided them with the preliminary was built drawings they just weren't certified like you know it was an inspector had stamps so to suggest that it took a hundred eleven days to pick up some of lack of attachment or whatever it was the last time the most important thing about the at the way that the way everything was attached stems from here we bring them in and they redesign the project it takes a few months to get the redesign done and alternately the project is back on course but it's only after you know like a six payments that you gave to the jury and your issue came up with this figure which is a percentage of the amount that they had to decide was late it doesn't add up to anything a night edition it doesn't multiplied anything that was specific in your evidence and yes in general evidence it seems to me about money that may have been paid late what is different maybe is the way i want to ask this about one hundred twenty seven thousand and the other late payments that must we were paid two hundred forty thousand dollars we were a certain amount of money up that three test he stated a minute ago of that one hundred twenty seven it was clearly their money we did not pay them we should have a letter in october of two thousand and twelve explaining why we weren't mean them but that was the only place where they showed evidence of what we were paid and did not pay them most of this claim has been about the back door to the un tried to delay damages which we were never paid to this day i grab the railroad in church because we can charge a premium to the federal government sorry that's the way the system works he want to insure we took the insurance he accepted but the contract it clearly took place by the papers he cited before he signed the contract so yes he could say whatever he wants but once he signed the contract that's what's in it he's not claiming those conversations took place after the fact because they took a really were gone for one hundred eleven days as he reported what the response was or maybe for some of these other breaks and are you saying that r c s had to have their people out there for this whole period without knowing when the delay was going to you know this was not these ok this is not th hundred eleven other days where they just didn't appear for several weeks at a time and that's what dr householder conceded and i want to get back to this point about when people were paid in change orders the very first change order in this case was a direct payment of two hundred fifty thousand dollars as an advance to r c s because it was so many difficulties in getting payment the court just agreed to a one hundred fifty thousand dollars vance to put money in their pocket because they were expecting money we didn't take a dime we didn't get paid anything either two hundred fifty thousand dollars  built drawings he absolutely said i game call him an aries but then he conceded on cross examination in face of an e mail that he said no i held them hostage until they until they gave me my money and then the other thing that we haven't talked about much is the mutual breach which their expert clearly conceded there was mutual breach in this case because the louisiana law says we can't be of law and i would point you to page thirty seven zero one two