[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:00:01] Speaker 04:
Nicholas Markey on behalf of Mr. Heraclio Robles Ixlacuac.

[00:00:07] Speaker 04:
May it please the court.

[00:00:10] Speaker 04:
This is a appeal from the BIA and the immigration judges, their denial of a motion to continue, as well as the denial of a request for release of cancellation or removal.

[00:00:22] Speaker 04:
The, oh, and I apologize.

[00:00:26] Speaker 04:
One minute for rebuttal.

[00:00:31] Speaker 04:
I think the facts are fairly important to this issue of the continuance.

[00:00:36] Speaker 04:
Mr. Robles was detained back 12-13, 2011.

[00:00:41] Speaker 04:
He had his first immigration hearing in detention.

[00:00:45] Speaker 04:
His second hearing was on January 6, 2012, where he was released and set for an out-of-custody master.

[00:00:53] Speaker 04:
That first out-of-custody master was 1-16, 2013.

[00:00:58] Speaker 04:
It was reset again for the submission of a application for relief, which was cancellation or removal.

[00:01:08] Speaker 04:
On 3-12-2014, an individual hearing was set for March 13, 2015.

[00:01:16] Speaker 02:
What is the prejudice?

[00:01:17] Speaker 02:
How did this harm your client not having the continuance?

[00:01:23] Speaker 04:
The prejudice, Your Honor, I think is quite clear.

[00:01:26] Speaker 04:
Counsel came in on the day of the individual hearing indicated that she has had a Rough time mental health issues anxiety.

[00:01:33] Speaker 04:
She was homeless.

[00:01:34] Speaker 04:
She said she wasn't prepared to file or proceed with the case

[00:01:39] Speaker 04:
And in this case, it's clear from the record she wasn't.

[00:01:42] Speaker 04:
There was no pre-hearing statement that was filed.

[00:01:45] Speaker 04:
What additional evidence would you now bring forward?

[00:01:48] Speaker 04:
I would bring forward, Your Honor, a mental health evaluation of the qualifying relatives.

[00:01:54] Speaker 04:
There was never one that was done.

[00:01:56] Speaker 04:
You have to show extreme and extreme... Has that now been done?

[00:02:00] Speaker 02:
In other words, did you proffer to the BIA that this is what we were unable to show and this is what we would show?

[00:02:06] Speaker 04:
No, because BIA is not a fact-finding agency.

[00:02:09] Speaker 04:
The BIA could remand it.

[00:02:11] Speaker 04:
But again, when you ask for a remand, that may be futile.

[00:02:15] Speaker 04:
Here, we're asking that you're saying, what was the prejudice?

[00:02:17] Speaker 04:
Why wasn't anything submitted?

[00:02:19] Speaker 04:
And what we're saying is, what to be submitted would be with the immigration judge so he could hear the evidence.

[00:02:25] Speaker 02:
Well, right.

[00:02:25] Speaker 02:
But I mean, the BIA, I think, pointed out that your client hadn't submitted to the BIA an indication of what he would provide.

[00:02:35] Speaker 04:
Is your position that you didn't have to do that but number one he did put that in his brief They did mention the mental health examination and saying the problem We have your honor is with these cases that last two three four five years if you get one mental health examination say within Six months of your hearing great, but what happens when that hearing isn't set for two or three or four years?

[00:03:00] Speaker 04:
When do you get it?

[00:03:01] Speaker 03:
And we don't know when we're going to get

[00:03:05] Speaker 03:
The next available date is in 2000 or something.

[00:03:10] Speaker 04:
2020, he said.

[00:03:11] Speaker 03:
2020, which was quite a ways down the road, right?

[00:03:15] Speaker 04:
It could have been, but here's the problem with that.

[00:03:17] Speaker 04:
They had bumped this case for what they said was a priority case.

[00:03:21] Speaker 04:
If the judge wanted to set this case, he could have set it out at 220 and then moved it back in.

[00:03:27] Speaker 04:
So his reliance on this myopic focus on the calendar was inappropriate.

[00:03:33] Speaker 04:
He didn't even discuss the decision of denying the motion to continue.

[00:03:39] Speaker 01:
The relief you want

[00:03:41] Speaker 01:
on the denial of the continuance as a remand and remand to the IJ.

[00:03:46] Speaker 04:
to the IJ, yes, your honor, so we can present the mental health information that both the immigration judge spoke about, as well as opposing counsel has said in her opening brief, or her responding brief, that there was no mental health evaluation that was conducted.

[00:04:02] Speaker 03:
You make one legal argument.

[00:04:06] Speaker 03:
That is that the IJ did not, the agency or the IJ did not consider the aggregate harm to the children.

[00:04:14] Speaker 03:
There were five children, I believe.

[00:04:16] Speaker 03:
Is that right?

[00:04:16] Speaker 04:
That's correct.

[00:04:18] Speaker 03:
So what was wrong with what they did?

[00:04:20] Speaker 04:
Well, it should have been a more thorough analysis of all of the harm to each one independently.

[00:04:28] Speaker 04:
Here, the IJ did the first three older children than the two older children.

[00:04:33] Speaker 04:
And we don't suspect that that's not sufficient enough.

[00:04:36] Speaker 04:
You must look at each individual qualifying relative as to each fact.

[00:04:43] Speaker 01:
What he did was they were in the same age range.

[00:04:46] Speaker 01:
They had the same individual with whom they lived, with whom he interacted and that sort of thing.

[00:04:52] Speaker 01:
So what's the prejudice here?

[00:04:54] Speaker 04:
The pressure is that insufficient facts to each qualifying relative.

[00:05:00] Speaker 04:
Here the judge grouped them in the older and the younger.

[00:05:04] Speaker 04:
Here he said the older live with the grandparents.

[00:05:08] Speaker 01:
And that was true.

[00:05:10] Speaker 01:
Each of them lived with the grandparents.

[00:05:12] Speaker 01:
So that's an individual determination.

[00:05:15] Speaker 04:
But what ties into the motion to continue was there was no testimony about how the children related with the grandparents

[00:05:23] Speaker 04:
whether the grandparents, the qualifying relatives were taken care of by the grandparents, nothing from the grandparents that said anything about how the kids felt about their father, how the separation would affect them, nothing like that.

[00:05:36] Speaker 03:
So I thought your argument was that they needed to look at the totality of all of them.

[00:05:40] Speaker 03:
You do look... That is, not just on an individual... Excuse me.

[00:05:46] Speaker 03:
You look at the harm, not just on an individual basis.

[00:05:48] Speaker 03:
You can do that, I mean, certainly you do that, but you also need to look at the harm

[00:05:54] Speaker 03:
In the totality of the circumstances that is you look at the you know the aggregation And I agree with you can also look at that, but you also have to take the individual I understand that but So what's what's so what's the proper analysis in your for from your perspective you just look at each individual and that's it each individual and then you can move to the totality of the circumstances in this case, but if you were kind of making a

[00:06:23] Speaker 01:
Five negatives equal a plus, if there's not really sufficient background or information to make that determination that you need, how does cumulative even help you?

[00:06:38] Speaker 04:
Well, that's the problem with this case itself.

[00:06:40] Speaker 04:
We don't have enough information to help us about how the qualifying relatives would suffer their harm.

[00:06:46] Speaker 04:
Here, you don't have any mental health information.

[00:06:50] Speaker 04:
You had the mother of the two youngest children testifying about how they would feel, but that was the extent of it.

[00:06:57] Speaker 04:
There needs to be more, and that ties into the motion to continue that was denied.

[00:07:03] Speaker 04:
Counsel said she wasn't prepared to go forward.

[00:07:06] Speaker 04:
She said she wasn't prepared to go forward because she was having mental health issues and had been homeless for a while.

[00:07:12] Speaker 04:
She asked for 45 days, which is more than reasonable in this context, to put on a case.

[00:07:19] Speaker 04:
You can get some expert.

[00:07:21] Speaker 04:
You can get the grandparents to come in and testify.

[00:07:24] Speaker 04:
There was no pre hearing statement.

[00:07:25] Speaker 04:
We didn't have declarations from the grandparents.

[00:07:27] Speaker 04:
We didn't have declarations from teachers, things like that.

[00:07:30] Speaker 03:
Let me ask you this.

[00:07:32] Speaker 03:
From your perspective, what you want is for us to say that there was an abuse of discretion in not granting the continuance.

[00:07:40] Speaker 03:
and remanding it back to the agency with directions to send it back to the IJ to pick up from there.

[00:07:48] Speaker 04:
Yes, that's right.

[00:07:48] Speaker 03:
Is that what you're asking for?

[00:07:51] Speaker 04:
That's what I want.

[00:07:52] Speaker 03:
We don't need to address anything else.

[00:07:54] Speaker 03:
If we agree with you on that, you're home free, so to speak.

[00:07:57] Speaker 04:
I would agree with that because I can establish a

[00:08:02] Speaker 02:
the burden for the cancellation removal because I don't have the facts that were submitted by the council that she didn't submit whose obligation is this I guess because the when we're looking at a due process violation we're asking is there prejudice and you're representing that there are things that you would try to do and develop but I think from the agency's perspective the bias perspective this wasn't provided to them.

[00:08:25] Speaker 04:
Well, the government argues that she provided letters, she provided documents, but the government also maintains that she didn't have any information about the mental health and how that will affect.

[00:08:37] Speaker 04:
Clearly, that's prejudicial if you don't have that type of evidence of emotional mental health evaluations, how the children are doing at school, things like that.

[00:08:48] Speaker 04:
All the IJ had here was the risk,

[00:08:52] Speaker 04:
the petitioner's testimony about how he paid money and about how he saw the children.

[00:08:58] Speaker 01:
And Vasquez-Marco also testified.

[00:09:01] Speaker 04:
Pardon me?

[00:09:02] Speaker 01:
Vasquez-Marco also testified about the children and the situation and what the relationship was.

[00:09:08] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:09:08] Speaker 04:
But I'm saying that the prejudice is council could have gotten an evaluation to address those issues.

[00:09:14] Speaker 04:
It's a high burden for the, for the respond or the petitioner

[00:09:17] Speaker 04:
to establish the relief.

[00:09:20] Speaker 04:
And most of the time, if not all, the immigration judges require some sort of evaluation on your qualifying relatives.

[00:09:28] Speaker 04:
And here we didn't have it, because counsel couldn't get it for whatever, well, for the reasons she said.

[00:09:37] Speaker 04:
Yes, she couldn't function properly.

[00:09:39] Speaker 02:
And that's where we say the prejudice is.

[00:09:41] Speaker 02:
We'll give you some time for rebuttal, but before you sit down,

[00:09:44] Speaker 02:
The BIA seemed to understand your argument to be on the on the aggregation of harms that what you were asking was that the harm be aggregated to get essentially across qualifying relatives.

[00:09:57] Speaker 02:
That seems to be how they interpreted your position.

[00:09:59] Speaker 02:
In other words, that you would take the

[00:10:01] Speaker 02:
the harm experienced by one, two, three people and you would kind of combine them all together.

[00:10:06] Speaker 02:
Is that your argument?

[00:10:07] Speaker 04:
My argument is you must look at each independent qualifying relative first and then get all of those facts and then at a certain point you can step up to take the aggregate.

[00:10:19] Speaker 04:
But the case law seems to indicate that you should look at each qualifying relative and the harm to that relative.

[00:10:25] Speaker 02:
Well, what if for each qualifying relative

[00:10:28] Speaker 02:
It's not exceptional and extremely unusual hardship.

[00:10:31] Speaker 02:
Do you then stop there, or would you then actually sort of add them all together and come up with some composite hardship?

[00:10:38] Speaker 04:
If you don't establish it per the individual, I don't know how you can get to the aggregate.

[00:10:44] Speaker 04:
That's my argument.

[00:10:47] Speaker 04:
You first have to look at the individual.

[00:10:49] Speaker 03:
The way I read some of the BEIA cases, they don't seem to agree with you.

[00:10:54] Speaker 04:
I would agree with that.

[00:10:56] Speaker 04:
They don't agree with me, and that's why I'm saying it should be changed.

[00:11:00] Speaker 04:
I'm sorry?

[00:11:00] Speaker 04:
I'm saying they don't agree with me.

[00:11:02] Speaker 03:
I agree.

[00:11:05] Speaker 03:
Well, I'm not sure what to make of your statement.

[00:11:09] Speaker 03:
As I read the BIA's decision, you can aggregate.

[00:11:12] Speaker 03:
And as I... In response to just the question that the Judge Press just asked you.

[00:11:17] Speaker 04:
And what I'm saying is you can aggregate once you take into each individual qualifying relative.

[00:11:23] Speaker 04:
Here the immigration judge didn't do that.

[00:11:25] Speaker 04:
He just lumped them up, two groups, and said, the financial aid is not sufficient.

[00:11:31] Speaker 02:
Your answers are somewhat confusing.

[00:11:33] Speaker 02:
Just because I would have thought what your argument was was that

[00:11:37] Speaker 02:
we will look and see what each hardship was, and even if it doesn't rise to the level of exceptional and extremely unusual, nonetheless, when you have multiple relatives, we can kind of stack them and conclude from that that everyone has experienced a hardship that qualifies.

[00:11:54] Speaker 02:
I understand.

[00:11:55] Speaker 02:
Okay, why don't we leave you two minutes for rebuttal?

[00:11:58] Speaker 02:
We'll hear from the government.

[00:12:06] Speaker 00:
Good morning.

[00:12:07] Speaker 00:
Can you hear me?

[00:12:08] Speaker 02:
We can.

[00:12:09] Speaker 02:
Good morning.

[00:12:10] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:12:10] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:12:10] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:12:12] Speaker 00:
Mona Youssef for the U.S.

[00:12:15] Speaker 00:
Attorney General.

[00:12:16] Speaker 00:
And I just want to take a quick thank you to opposing counsel and to this court for allowing me to appear remotely today.

[00:12:21] Speaker 00:
The court should deny this petition.

[00:12:25] Speaker 00:
Here, the IJ properly applied the BIA's en banc decision in Montréal.

[00:12:30] Speaker 00:
to conclude that the petitioner here did not establish that his removal would result in hardship substantially beyond the ordinary hardship that is limited to truly exceptional circumstances.

[00:12:43] Speaker 00:
But I wanna take a quick minute to respond to what counsel has been talking about in terms of the continuance.

[00:12:50] Speaker 00:
This case was, he first filed his cancellation removal application in 2013.

[00:12:56] Speaker 00:
He submitted documents then

[00:12:59] Speaker 00:
He submitted documents again a year later.

[00:13:02] Speaker 00:
And then in 2015, the court did extend, continue his removal proceedings from 2015 to 2017.

[00:13:11] Speaker 00:
That was plenty of time in order for any mental records or medical records to be submitted in the record.

[00:13:19] Speaker 00:
Unfortunately, his counsel had a problem in June of 2017.

[00:13:23] Speaker 00:
That was only a month or so before the hearing, but up until then,

[00:13:29] Speaker 00:
all these documents should have been requested.

[00:13:31] Speaker 00:
And even if they now believe that there are documents that should be provided, they've had ample time to provide those through a motion to reopen to the board to say, here, these are the documents.

[00:13:43] Speaker 03:
Did the IJ, during that interval that you just described, did the IJ impose any deadlines for getting the work done?

[00:13:52] Speaker 03:
I don't believe so.

[00:13:55] Speaker 03:
And submitting matters to the court?

[00:13:57] Speaker 00:
I honestly don't remember from the transcript.

[00:14:00] Speaker 00:
Usually what IJs do is that they at least allow maybe 15 days before the trial date to submit your documents.

[00:14:09] Speaker 00:
15 or 30 days is typically what I've seen in most cases.

[00:14:12] Speaker 03:
And do you recall if there was any such deadline here?

[00:14:16] Speaker 03:
I do not recall.

[00:14:17] Speaker 00:
I am sorry you're on.

[00:14:19] Speaker 03:
Well, you know, it sounded like her personal circumstance, that is lawyer's personal circumstances, were pretty serious.

[00:14:29] Speaker 03:
Am I misreading the record there?

[00:14:32] Speaker 00:
No, I don't want to downplay what she probably went through.

[00:14:35] Speaker 00:
They said she was homeless and she was having mental problems.

[00:14:38] Speaker 00:
But she also said when she said that she wasn't ready, that was in response to the IJ asking if there were any documents she said she wanted to submit.

[00:14:46] Speaker 00:
And she said, no, I'm not ready.

[00:14:48] Speaker 00:
I don't have anything.

[00:14:49] Speaker 00:
But the odd thing is later on in the hearing, she actually did submit some documents and she did ask the proper questions when

[00:14:57] Speaker 00:
the petitioner was on the stand and the petitioner's girlfriend was on the stand.

[00:15:01] Speaker 00:
They asked about the children.

[00:15:02] Speaker 00:
They asked about how much money he provides, how often he sees them.

[00:15:07] Speaker 00:
He asked if there was any medical problems.

[00:15:09] Speaker 00:
They asked the mother of the two younger children if there were medical problems and she said no.

[00:15:14] Speaker 00:
So I don't see.

[00:15:15] Speaker 03:
You know, I understand that what took place after the request for continuance was denied, but you know, it seems like it was a reasonable request under the circumstances.

[00:15:29] Speaker 03:
Well, I believe that- Wasn't asking for an extensive period of time.

[00:15:33] Speaker 03:
And the IJ just came back and said, well, you know, the next available date is, was it about a year and a half out?

[00:15:40] Speaker 00:
I think it was three years out.

[00:15:42] Speaker 00:
It was three years out.

[00:15:43] Speaker 03:
And I will say- That's not her fault, is it?

[00:15:45] Speaker 00:
No, it's absolutely not.

[00:15:47] Speaker 00:
And I will say that the board did acknowledge that.

[00:15:49] Speaker 00:
They did not rule on the matter of whether it was an abuse of discretion.

[00:15:53] Speaker 00:
They said that they didn't like the fact or they

[00:15:56] Speaker 00:
were uncomfortable with the fact that the only reason that the IJ gave was the timing, because I guess the docket was so booked up, you couldn't get another hearing for another three years.

[00:16:06] Speaker 03:
We've said that, too, in our opinions, that we don't look favorably upon timeliness as the need to get it done.

[00:16:15] Speaker 03:
When there are circumstances that suggest that a continuance is probably worth, is meritorious.

[00:16:23] Speaker 00:
Well, that said, to get a continuance, you also have to, one of the factors is to prove what evidence you would need or you're going to submit in order to justify the continuance.

[00:16:34] Speaker 00:
And that was never really done here.

[00:16:36] Speaker 00:
So it may be if the opposing council had said, well, I still need to go get medical records or something like that.

[00:16:43] Speaker 00:
Maybe the IJ would have changed their mind, but that wasn't the argument that was made in front of the.

[00:16:48] Speaker 00:
in front of the IJ.

[00:16:49] Speaker 00:
And like I said, the board didn't really put their stamp of approval on the fact that it was only about the three years of timing, but they did say there is no prejudice.

[00:16:58] Speaker 00:
And even in his briefs before the BIA, and even now, there's been no mention about what documents would be brought.

[00:17:05] Speaker 00:
This is the first I've heard about a mental evaluation or anything.

[00:17:08] Speaker 00:
And in that case, they still could have filed a motion to reopen over that span of time too.

[00:17:14] Speaker 01:
Would you address the question of

[00:17:17] Speaker 01:
dealing with the children in group of younger children and older children as opposed to each individually?

[00:17:24] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:17:25] Speaker 00:
The IJ here did do it in two different groups, but I think of it as two different households.

[00:17:30] Speaker 00:
And the product of the agency's decisions are the product of the way this case was argued.

[00:17:36] Speaker 00:
He argued that he saw his three older kids, he saw them once a month,

[00:17:43] Speaker 00:
They lived together.

[00:17:43] Speaker 00:
They were supported by grandma.

[00:17:45] Speaker 00:
He provided about $1,900 a year for the three of them in child support.

[00:17:52] Speaker 00:
Then they had the younger children, again, another household.

[00:17:56] Speaker 00:
So the mother there testified.

[00:17:58] Speaker 00:
She's trying not to get the kids too emotionally attached.

[00:18:01] Speaker 00:
That's why he doesn't live in that household.

[00:18:04] Speaker 00:
So what you're really dealing with here is five qualifying relatives in two different households.

[00:18:11] Speaker 00:
neither of which petitioner belongs to and those no question that they might not have as much financial aid if petitioners are moved to mexico because his earnings won't be as great as they are here and his kids will probably miss him but those are common hardships and even when you aggregate those two households together you still have

[00:18:32] Speaker 00:
common hardships that you can't aggregate to make exceptional and extremely unusual hardships.

[00:18:38] Speaker 00:
What you need is there needs to be something unusual about the hardship to at least one of the qualifying relatives in order to reach that standard.

[00:18:46] Speaker 00:
Otherwise, you could have five kids in five different states and say, you know, I provide a little bit of money to all of them.

[00:18:53] Speaker 00:
And I talk to them, you know, every once in a while, but that really doesn't add up to the hardship that we're looking at, say, in Racine, where there's a single mother, all the kids are going to go move back with her.

[00:19:04] Speaker 00:
She's going to be by herself because her LPR mother is still in the United States, so she won't have her backup caretaker.

[00:19:11] Speaker 00:
So she's solely responsible for those

[00:19:15] Speaker 00:
Well, there are six kids, four of them are US citizen children, but her hardships affect them.

[00:19:22] Speaker 00:
So it's not that they aggregated the hardships of mom, grandma, and the kids.

[00:19:27] Speaker 00:
They just saw how all the hardships of mom and grandma, or not having grandma around to take care of them, affected those four children.

[00:19:35] Speaker 03:
Let me ask you this, would you agree that the board has recognized the use of aggregation in some circumstances?

[00:19:45] Speaker 03:
I mean, you just pointed to Rosina's.

[00:19:47] Speaker 00:
Yeah, I mean, they did.

[00:19:48] Speaker 00:
And they actually said that in this case, too.

[00:19:51] Speaker 00:
They said, let's see, there's the first sentence where they're basically affirming the IJ's decision.

[00:19:56] Speaker 00:
And I argued that the IJ did get that right.

[00:19:59] Speaker 00:
And then they're responding.

[00:20:01] Speaker 00:
to petitioners argument in his brief.

[00:20:03] Speaker 00:
And that time he argued that they should have aggregated household number one and household number two.

[00:20:09] Speaker 00:
which the IJ actually did do in his opinion.

[00:20:11] Speaker 00:
And then they said the immigration judge and we consider the hardship in the aggregate.

[00:20:16] Speaker 00:
So they're saying that that was done in this case and that is the proper standard.

[00:20:21] Speaker 02:
What do we mean by that though?

[00:20:22] Speaker 02:
I guess because it could mean one of two things.

[00:20:25] Speaker 02:
It could mean for each person, we aggregate all the different types of harms they would experience.

[00:20:31] Speaker 02:
financial, educational, emotional health, all these things, or it could mean we take an aggregation of multiple people and we look at the harms to person one, two, three, and four, and we combine those.

[00:20:47] Speaker 02:
What do you understand the BIA to be saying here in both this case and in its other decisions?

[00:20:54] Speaker 00:
I mean, that's a very good question.

[00:20:55] Speaker 00:
If you look at Monroe, they actually do have two different households.

[00:20:58] Speaker 00:
In that case, there's a household with the kids and there's a household of the LPR parents.

[00:21:04] Speaker 00:
And at the end of the decision, they said, there's going to be some financial and emotional hardship to the kids.

[00:21:09] Speaker 00:
There's going to be some emotional hardship to the parents.

[00:21:12] Speaker 00:
If the.

[00:21:13] Speaker 00:
alien is removed.

[00:21:14] Speaker 00:
And at the end, they said, they neither established hardships to the children or the parents.

[00:21:20] Speaker 00:
So it looks like they're they're not aggregating the two households together.

[00:21:25] Speaker 00:
But in Racine, it's like I said, there's like one household, I think it's another way of saying totality of the circumstances.

[00:21:35] Speaker 00:
If you were to have at least one relative that has something unusual,

[00:21:40] Speaker 00:
whether it be a medical condition it can't be taken care of in Mexico or one of the LPR parents absolutely is solely dependent on the alien who is going to be removed.

[00:21:54] Speaker 00:
Your focus is basically on that relative, but that doesn't mean you can't consider the other factors involved to the other people.

[00:22:01] Speaker 00:
And I hope that made a little bit of sense.

[00:22:03] Speaker 00:
And please let me know if I need to clarify.

[00:22:05] Speaker 00:
I apologize.

[00:22:08] Speaker 03:
No, I appreciate the finesse with which you just explained your position there.

[00:22:19] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:22:20] Speaker 00:
It looks like I'm out of time, unless anyone has any questions.

[00:22:25] Speaker 02:
OK, hearing none, I want to thank you for your presentation.

[00:22:27] Speaker 02:
And we'll hear two minutes of rebuttal.

[00:22:29] Speaker 00:
Thank you for your time.

[00:22:32] Speaker 04:
Your honor, the only issue I want to address is the continuance that was denied.

[00:22:39] Speaker 04:
And I think counsel is right.

[00:22:40] Speaker 04:
I don't believe that there was a scheduling order issued by the judge to set dates for things to be completed.

[00:22:47] Speaker 04:
And that is a problem.

[00:22:48] Speaker 04:
Typically, I think it's a 30-day filing deadline with the practice manual.

[00:22:55] Speaker 04:
And because counsel had such, you know,

[00:22:58] Speaker 04:
stress and emotional distress and her personal problems, she couldn't make that.

[00:23:03] Speaker 04:
So I think that's what the prejudice is.

[00:23:05] Speaker 04:
She couldn't get it together to get the documents that she needed.

[00:23:10] Speaker 04:
That's all I have.

[00:23:12] Speaker 02:
Okay.

[00:23:13] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:23:14] Speaker 02:
We thank both counsel for the briefing and argument.

[00:23:17] Speaker 02:
This case is submitted.