An Interesting Connection

I started making my way through some of the information I recently received from the City of Great Falls. In the stack, I found a Memorandum entitled "Legal Analysis-City of Great Falls Water Service To Salem Plant." It was directed to John Lawton and Coleen Balzarini from Harley R. Harris, a lawyer with the Luxan & Murfitt law firm, dated November 22, 2004. We paid Luxan & Murfitt $140.00 an hour for this work.

Roughly 4 months later, the City Commission was presented with a Water Services Agreement, which, when signed, obligated the City to provide water for the Highwood Generating Station, apparently regardless of the City's involvement in the project. The parties to this Agreement were SME and the City.

This struck me as interesting because not too long ago I received a letter from another Luxan & Murfitt lawyer, and he was representing SME.

I do not know whether Luxan & Murfitt represented the City of Great Falls in negotiating the Water Services Agreement or whether they represented SME, or neither one. I do know that one law firm cannot represent both sides to a contract during the negotiation of that contract.

The November 22 Memorandum would suggest that Luxan & Murfitt was representing the City since it is directed toward the almost exact subject matter of the later Water Service Agreement. Further, Mr. Harris represented to the City Commission in August 2005 that he had been representing the City for 6-8 months. Assuming that to be true, I wonder, then who was representing SME. And I wonder, too, when Luxan & Murfitt stopped representing the City and started representing SME.