Last fall, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan notified Uber Technologies Inc. of the firm's decision to end their attorney-client relationship, according to a recently filed document in the ongoing legal battle between the ride-hailing giant and Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Waymo.

In a July 20 filing from Uber, it's revealed that Quinn Emanuel, which now represents Waymo in the dispute over driverless car technology, emailed a number of top attorneys in Uber's legal department, including current chief legal officer Salle Yoo, to cut off the relationship. The email from Quinn Emanuel partner Stephen Swedlow, dated Sept. 23, 2016, noted that, since the firm entered into Uber's preferred counsel program with fixed fee arrangements, the cases and tasks it has been hired for have “been at rates that are not financially viable” for the firm.

“As we have discussed many times, if QE was also getting the cases with larger amounts in dispute involving more significant budgets, the smaller tasks on smaller cases would be part of the overall relationship,” Swedlow, who is co-managing partner of the firm's Chicago office, wrote in the email. “But we have not gotten any of the larger disputes for Uber under the preferred counsel program.”