130 F.2d 687

KIMM et al. v. BRECKE et al.

No. 12002.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Sept 8, 1942.

*688See also, 8 Cir., 130 F.2d 721.

Seth Lundquist, of Minneapolis, Minn. (D. J. Shama, of Minneapolis, Minn., on the brief), for appellants.

Benedict Deinard, of Minneapolis, Minn. (Oscar A. Brecke, of Minneapolis, Minn., on the brief), for appellees.

Before STONE, WOODROUGH, and JOHNSEN, Circuit Judges.

STONE, Circuit Jodge.

This is an appeal, by unsecured creditors, from an order of allowance of fees to counsel for the trustee in the bankruptcy proceeding of the Calhoun Beach Club Holding Company.

Appellants present three points here which are as follows:

"I. The appellees are disqualified by reason of their adverse interests and therefore are not entitled to any fees.

II. The newly-discovered evidence calls for re-examination of the qualifications' of the appellee officers of the court.

III. Assuming the right of appellees to any fees, the allowance made was excessive.”

This appeal is one of four (our Nos. 12,001, 12,002,12,003 and 12,004) concerning orders in this bankruptcy proceeding. These appeals were submitted at the same time and an opinion in each is filed today. The matters presented here in points I and II above were involved in appeal No. 12,001 and are determined adversely to appellants in the opinion filed today in that appeal. This leaves only point III for examination.

Excessive Allowance.

June 4, 1938, the Court made an order which covered two matters. The first was a nunc pro tunc change in an order of May 22, 1933, whereby the earlier order was changed from a general employment of these counsel for the trustee to a special employment covering the prosecution of an action on a contractor bond given by the Joseph A. Holpuch Company as principal and the Fidelity and Casualty Company ^.s surety. The second matter authorized employment of these counsel by the trustee “for the purpose of closing the above estate and taking all proceedings necessary to that end under a. general retainer.” This allowance is for services of counsel, under this general retainer, for a period from September 23, 1938, to March 21, 1939.

In his certificate on review, the referee stated that the testimony on this application “was taken at length * * * over a period of many days and before a court reporter.” The certificate contained “a summary of the evidence relating” to this issue and various exhibits were attached to the certificate. No transcript of the evidence was returned. No objection was made by petitioners to the form or the substance of this certificate and the review was presented thereon. In preparation of the record on this appeal, appellants sought to include transcript of the evidence of three witnesses. On motion by appellees, this was excluded by the trial court because such evidence “was not included in the Certificate of the Referee dated August 1, 1939 upon which said order of this court of January 2, 1941 was based, and was not certified to this court by the Referee and was not considered by this court, and does not constitute a proper part of the record on appeal.” No issue is raised here as to such exclusion. In this situation, we are relegated to the summarization of the evidence as contained in the certificate (see In re Fineman, D.C.Md., 32 F.Supp. 212, 213, 214, and In re Burntside Lodge, D.C.Minn., *6897 F.Supp. 785, 786) and the attached exhibits. This entire summary is stated in the footnote.1

This Court has said that an allowance of attorney fees in a bankruptcy proceeding should not he disturbed on ap*690peal “unless there is a clear abuse of discretion” or the fees allowed are “clearly excessive or clearly inadequate”. Silver v. Scullin Steel Co., 8 Cir., 980 F.2d 503, 505, 506. Also, see Hugg v. Crooks, 8 Cir., 122 F.2d 366, 368. From the record before us we cannot say that the allowance of $2,000.00 here was so clearly excessive that we should substitute our judgment for that of the trial court and of the referee, tooth of whom are more acquainted with the situation than we can be from the bare printed record. However, we should add that, considering the earlier allowance ($7,750.47) and the amount of assets in this estate ($31,021.89), there should be no further substantial allowance unless future litigation arises requiring unusual effort upon the part of counsel. In bankruptcy proceedings, it sometimes happens that services of counsel cannot be compensated as fully as might otherwise be. Callaghan v. Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 297 U.S. 464, 468, 56 S.Ct. 519, 80 L.Ed. 804; Butzel v. Webster Apartments Co., 6 Cir., 112 F.2d 362, 367; In re Standard Gas & Elec. Co., 3 Cir., 106 F.2d 215, 217; In re Curtis, 7 Cir., 100 F. 784, 792.

The order must be and is affirmed.

Kimm v. Brecke
130 F.2d 687

Case Details

Name
Kimm v. Brecke
Decision Date
Sep 8, 1942
Citations

130 F.2d 687

Jurisdiction
United States

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