[00:00:00] Speaker 03:
First matter.

[00:00:01] Speaker 02:
Ian Ray Chapman, Marion Chapman, Appellant and Pro Se, Garrick Warrington, Council for Appley, Pacific Loan Works, Incorporated.

[00:00:12] Speaker 03:
Okay, come on up.

[00:00:16] Speaker 03:
Okay, and you tell us your name for the record just so we have it.

[00:00:19] Speaker 02:
Marion Chapman. Okay, nice to see you. I'm representing myself.

[00:00:22] Speaker 03:
Nice to see you.

[00:00:23] Speaker 02:
Nice meeting you all. Your Honor, I'm here and And if the court permits, I would like to reserve the majority of my time so that I could hear what a specific loan attorney has to say so that I may have any rebuttal to what they are, what they're alleging has happened.

[00:00:47] Speaker 03:
Okay. Are we starting the time?

[00:00:49] Speaker 02:
Oh, yes. The time hasn't started.

[00:00:52] Speaker 03:
You got a break. Right out of the box, you get a break. Okay. Is this a great place or what?

[00:00:58] Speaker 03:
Well, if you want to ask whether we have any questions, you can certainly do that.

[00:01:03] Speaker 02:
I've acknowledged the first question that you asked.

[00:01:10] Speaker 02:
What is my concern? Yes.

[00:01:13] Speaker 03:
No, what was the mistake?

[00:01:14] Speaker 02:
What was the mistake? My concern is that the court permanently validated the foreclosure sale while important disputes, equitable concerns still remain unresolved. And I believe those unresolved issues should have carried greater weight in balancing analysis before the foreclosure sale was retroactively validated.

[00:01:38] Speaker 03:
Okay. Okay.

[00:01:42] Speaker 02:
Is there any other question you'd like to ask me?

[00:01:44] Speaker 03:
I will defer to my colleagues.

[00:01:47] Speaker 00:
No, go ahead and reserve the rest of your time if you want.

[00:01:49] Speaker 03:
Okay. Judge Sprecher, same? Same. Okay. Well, you're going to have an awful lot of rebuttal time, okay? If you want to hear what the other side has to say, then you can bring it on home, okay? All right. Thank you.

[00:02:00] Speaker 02:
All right. Thank you.

[00:02:13] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors. May it please the Court, Garrick Warrington for the appellee, Pacific Loan Works.

[00:02:19] Speaker 00:
To address the issue that the appellant raised just now, I'm going to go to the standard of review, which is abuse of discretion.

[00:02:32] Speaker 00:
This is the order on appeal is an order terminating the stay and annulling the stay under Section 362D1 of the Bankruptcy Code.

[00:02:42] Speaker 00:
The court's determination as to annulment turns on the court's application of various factors. Those factors are set forth in the Fieldstead case, the Ninth Circuit case from 2003. The court correctly identified that case.

[00:03:00] Speaker 00:
And she analyzed, rather methodically, various of those factors that were relevant and at issue at the trial level.

[00:03:15] Speaker 00:
She did weigh and balance the equities explicitly on the record.

[00:03:21] Speaker 00:
I think that goes to the appellant's concern about placing greater weight on certain factors and her not agreeing with how the trial court did that.

[00:03:37] Speaker 00:
However, the standard of review is clear that it is a discretionary standard, and each one of the court's findings that she based her balancing on were supported by the record. And so we don't believe that the court committed error here.

[00:04:01] Speaker 00:
I'm happy to answer any questions that the court may have.

[00:04:03] Speaker 03:
I don't have any.

[00:04:07] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:04:08] Speaker 03:
Okay. Thank you very much. Okay.

[00:04:28] Speaker 02:
Your Honors, I understand that the Court applied the Fedstead balancing factors. We're ruling on an annulment. And respectfully, I understand that the court's prior findings that I was not the borrower and I could not reorganize the debt. My position today is not that the court needed fully decide that the entire wrongful foreclosure case during the annulment hearing. My position is narrow.

[00:04:59] Speaker 02:
The point is important because keeping things in place while the appeal is reviewed, would have caused limited harm to the appellee.

[00:05:11] Speaker 02:
while the harm to me would cause permit because it affected title, possession, and equity interest before the appeal is completed. So respectfully, Your Honor, my concern is not simply whether the foreclosure eventually occurred. My concern is whether the foreclosure sale had been permanently validated before the disputed issues received full appellate review.

[00:05:41] Speaker 02:
And respectfully, I believe there is an important difference between what the court actually decided and a broader issue that still remain undisputed. My understanding is that the court ruled permanently on equitable annulment, notice, judicial economy, and balancing factors.

[00:06:05] Speaker 03:
Well, can I ask you a question?

[00:06:07] Speaker 03:
If the court had not annulled the stay, that wouldn't – neither at that point nor at a further motion on relief from stay was the court going to adjudicate questions about whether the foreclosure was proper or not, correct?

[00:06:23] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:06:24] Speaker 03:
Okay. So this is only a question of – the effect of the annulment was the moving party, the lender – now owner perhaps, didn't have to file a motion for relief from stay.

[00:06:37] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:06:38] Speaker 03:
Okay, so that's what the difference is, right? Differences. Okay, so tell us why that, if there would have been a hearing in two weeks or three weeks on a motion for relief from stay, help me out with where the harm is there.

[00:06:50] Speaker 01:
And if I could just add, another important factor is that this is the second bankruptcy in a very short time, correct? Correct.

[00:06:56] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:06:58] Speaker 01:
But I mean, to go to Judge Lafferty's point, it even builds a little more that that the state was going to go away in 30 days. And so it doubles down on what Judge Lafferty is saying.

[00:07:12] Speaker 01:
The economy there is look like a very uphill battle to stop the foreclosure.

[00:07:21] Speaker 02:
Understand that and I believe in the transcripts that they the judge did not She mentioned that part that portion, but she didn't weigh heavily on it That was not part of her determining factor for the annulment. I believe her If I'm understanding you correctly The factor was and you brought up the serial filing because there was no I could not plead my case to why I was labeled as a serial fowler.

[00:07:56] Speaker 02:
She didn't weigh heavily on that at all either.

[00:07:58] Speaker 01:
Okay, but then that just goes back to Judge Laverty's point.

[00:08:02] Speaker 03:
Yeah, I mean, it's really putting aside any normative issues that maybe didn't even have to be addressed. It's a practical issue of, even without the limitation Judge Spraker's mentioning, if the court didn't annul the stay, it's a given the lender was going to move for a leave from stay And at that point, the only question is, are they entitled to relief from stay? It wouldn't have been a question of whether the foreclosure was problematic or not.

[00:08:27] Speaker 02:
Right.

[00:08:29] Speaker 03:
And that's a pretty, I mean, we're going to get into that a few times today. That's a very summary process. The only question is, should the bankruptcy stay be in the way of whatever else has to happen here?

[00:08:40] Speaker 02:
It is my understanding, and had The opportunity presented itself.

[00:08:47] Speaker 02:
There's an issue concerning the authority in which Pacific Loan Works had in order to even present the motion.

[00:08:59] Speaker 02:
They did not determine they had the authority. It was all based upon a declaration and a service agreement that was never presented to the court.

[00:09:09] Speaker 01:
But the declaration was presented, right?

[00:09:11] Speaker 02:
The declaration said that they had the authority.

[00:09:18] Speaker 01:
And they were the servicer, which means that they had the authority.

[00:09:23] Speaker 02:
They said that, but they never presented anything.

[00:09:26] Speaker 01:
But there was no evidence to challenge that. There was a sworn statement, which is equivalent to testimony in that situation, right? Correct. And there was nothing that said, no, here's the evidence that it isn't. And actually that lined up with the note in deed of trust, too.

[00:09:42] Speaker 01:
So, I mean, the problem is until there's actually a true dispute, there's no need for an evidentiary hearing. It just kind of rolls on because it's not disputed, and that's what happened here, isn't it? Yes, it is. Okay. But to Judge Laverty's introduction, why is that error?

[00:10:03] Speaker 01:
Because it was unrebutted. I mean, it wasn't disputed.

[00:10:07] Speaker 01:
So maybe it could have been, but it wasn't, and the hearing went on that ground.

[00:10:12] Speaker 02:
Right.

[00:10:15] Speaker 02:
Because I was not representing myself. I could not dispute it. I could just, as you noticed in the hearing, I was just waving my hands trying to dispute issues. And I had representation.

[00:10:28] Speaker 02:
So I just, all of what could have been said was not said at the hearing. And I couldn't say it. And I did bring up several issues. It states in the transcript.

[00:10:41] Speaker 03:
Okay. Maybe you've got some rights to flow from that that are different from what we're talking about here. Okay. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. You'll see. We probably won't know about that. Okay.

[00:10:57] Speaker 02:
So if you have a question, you can ask me so I can better get maybe an understanding that I could maybe make myself clearer.

[00:11:08] Speaker 03:
I think I understand you.

[00:11:13] Speaker 01:
And like Judge Lavery said, we've read your briefs. We've read all the briefs. So, I mean, we do have a better understanding of this. Yeah.

[00:11:21] Speaker 02:
As your question is, how would things have changed?

[00:11:24] Speaker 01:
The error.

[00:11:25] Speaker 02:
The error?

[00:11:26] Speaker 01:
There has to be something legally wrong. Because as we're hearing you, you say it should have been handled differently. But unfortunately, it wasn't. So it was handled, it was decided. Now on appeal, we don't do it again. We have to find something legally wrong to reverse it or change what was decided.

[00:11:44] Speaker 02:
I just, in looking at the case, I felt that the case was based...

[00:11:51] Speaker 02:
it was not balanced correctly. It was not balanced fairly. It was balanced on Pacific loan works and it was not, it was not fair balance. And I believe the, uh, the ruling that she, the cases she ruled upon, it, it said it must be a balanced evenly or balanced correctly.

[00:12:10] Speaker 01:
It, it, It's for the judge to decide. There's a wide range of what a bankruptcy judge can do fine. And I believe that's what she said is that I'm going to go through all the factors. But basically, she gets to figure out which ones are the important ones in that case. And she seemed to do that.

[00:12:28] Speaker 03:
So if you think she did that wrongly, now's the time to tell us what part of that she got wrong.

[00:12:39] Speaker 02:
I understand that part of the court's ruling, if I'm on track, my position is not that these disputes were automatically prevented to stay the relief. My position is that those unresolved disputes matter with the court deciding whether the retroactive was equitable or not.

[00:12:58] Speaker 02:
Hopefully I'm answering you correctly.

[00:13:00] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:13:03] Speaker 02:
I just believe that as I read how the ruling should be in an annulment is very narrow and I don't I don't believe that I don't believe she weighed the equities equally fairly and maybe fairly is not the correct word but it was a lot you're entitled to say that if you don't think it was fair you don't think it was fair that's fine And because it was retroactive and permanent, I believe that I... Okay.

[00:13:43] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:13:46] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:13:48] Speaker 03:
Well, I don't have any more questions.

[00:13:50] Speaker 01:
No, I don't.

[00:13:51] Speaker 03:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, the matter is submitted, and we'll get you a written decision as soon as we can. Okay?

[00:13:58] Speaker 03:
Thank you.