[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
case for argument is 21-1660, Haggart v. United States.

[00:00:10] Speaker 01:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:00:13] Speaker 01:
May it please the Court.

[00:00:15] Speaker 01:
I'm Gordon Woodley, attorney for appellant.

[00:00:18] Speaker 01:
I'm here seeking justice for Denise Woodley so that her fifth amendment, just compensation, is kept whole just as Congress intended.

[00:00:30] Speaker 01:
Two issues before the court this morning.

[00:00:32] Speaker 01:
First, whether the claims court was wrong to retroactively nullify the URA's mandatory requirement that it was the government which is obligated to pay this landowner's URA litigation expenses, including attorney's fees.

[00:00:50] Speaker 04:
Let me ask you, sir.

[00:00:51] Speaker 04:
The government sites and the court of claims relied on the fact that the way we've construed other statutory provisions, similar statutory provisions on attorney's fees, would preclude the award of fees here, at least to pro se plaintiffs.

[00:01:11] Speaker 04:
Do you concede that and just say there's something different about the URA so that those precedents with respect to other statutes should not apply here?

[00:01:20] Speaker 04:
Or do you just disagree with the conclusions drawn from the court cases on those other statutes?

[00:01:28] Speaker 01:
We disagree.

[00:01:32] Speaker 01:
First of all, Denise Woodley

[00:01:35] Speaker 01:
was uh... never truly pro se she was always represented in this case and these are her attorneys fees that she incurred with woodley law uh... throughout this case in two thousand fourteen two to the president welcome at just on that point i don't want to interrupt you just thought but i mean that there are various findings by the court of federal claims and references to the record we are

[00:02:01] Speaker 04:
You, the parties would just describe themselves as pro se litigants.

[00:02:07] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:02:08] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:02:09] Speaker 04:
Yes.

[00:02:09] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:02:10] Speaker 04:
But you're saying that was incorrect?

[00:02:13] Speaker 01:
No.

[00:02:13] Speaker 01:
Um, I was technically a pro se litigant when, even though I was represented by class counsel, class counsel wasn't going to be, uh, writing the brief on appeal.

[00:02:27] Speaker 01:
Um, Denise Woodley.

[00:02:31] Speaker 01:
whose claim this is for attorney's fees, she was always represented.

[00:02:35] Speaker 01:
First, she was represented by class counsel.

[00:02:38] Speaker 01:
Then she was represented by me starting in February of 2014.

[00:02:42] Speaker 01:
And then she was represented by the two of us, David Frederick of the Kellogg firm and myself from February 5th of 2015.

[00:02:52] Speaker 00:
For most of this proceeding, if not all of it, she referred to herself as pro se, as a pro se litigant.

[00:03:02] Speaker 01:
Um, we did not have the right, um, well, we did not have the right in before the claims court to file any documents that class counsel did not approve or did not author.

[00:03:18] Speaker 01:
And so anything we'd write that would say Denise Woodley, um, uh, represented by, uh, Gordon Woodley of Woodley law would be stricken.

[00:03:28] Speaker 01:
So that is why the, uh, original notice of appeal.

[00:03:32] Speaker 00:
We're not examining or reviewing the authority or the basis, the legitimacy of proceeding as pro se.

[00:03:42] Speaker 00:
What we're looking at, what we're reviewing is whether a pro se litigant is entitled to reasonable attorney's fees.

[00:03:49] Speaker 00:
And it seems to me that the statute and the law and the cases that are applicable in this case weigh heavily against you.

[00:04:00] Speaker 01:
Your honor doesn't weigh heavily against Denise Woodley.

[00:04:03] Speaker 01:
She was represented throughout this case.

[00:04:08] Speaker 01:
And if you look to the case of the Rickley versus County of Los Angeles case from the ninth circuit in attorney spouse, those fees were recovered in a civil rights action.

[00:04:24] Speaker 01:
And it's even more persuasive in this case.

[00:04:26] Speaker 04:
How can it be more persuasive, where in that case the plaintiff was not the attorney representing, the spouse of representing the plaintiff, was not also a party in the case?

[00:04:37] Speaker 04:
So how can it be more persuasive than this case?

[00:04:41] Speaker 01:
Well, because the statutes are different, and the purposes of the statutes are different.

[00:04:48] Speaker 01:
In this case, the statute is to keep

[00:04:51] Speaker 01:
Denise Woodley Hole in her just compensation.

[00:04:55] Speaker 01:
In the Civil Rights Action, it is to pay an attorney's fees for a civil rights violation.

[00:05:06] Speaker 01:
And here we have Fifth Amendment just compensation.

[00:05:09] Speaker 01:
There is no Fifth Amendment just compensation in the

[00:05:12] Speaker 01:
in the civil rights arena.

[00:05:13] Speaker 04:
So why does that change?

[00:05:15] Speaker 04:
I mean, is there anything in the URA?

[00:05:16] Speaker 04:
I mean, are you just saying that the cases on other statutory provisions regarding attorney's fees are not apt because there's something different about a URA claim?

[00:05:28] Speaker 04:
So why would the difference between a URA claim and a civil rights claim dictate the policy that's driving these civil rights claims in terms of getting attorneys and so forth?

[00:05:41] Speaker 01:
Yes, the congressional policies behind the two statutes are different.

[00:05:48] Speaker 04:
And they're probably different in numerous respects, but how are they different in a way that affects the issue we're discussing here?

[00:05:58] Speaker 01:
There is no exception in the URA to disallow attorney's fees incurred with an attorney's spouse.

[00:06:09] Speaker 03:
Well, there's no exception in the civil rights cases either.

[00:06:12] Speaker 01:
No.

[00:06:12] Speaker 03:
It's one that's been construed by the court.

[00:06:14] Speaker 01:
No.

[00:06:15] Speaker 01:
But in the Rickley case that squarely looked at this issue.

[00:06:23] Speaker 00:
That's not what happened here.

[00:06:26] Speaker 00:
The denial of attorney's fees is not because

[00:06:30] Speaker 00:
You're the spouse of Mrs. Woodley.

[00:06:32] Speaker 00:
And this is not whether attorney's fees are denied because the pro se litigant was represented by her spouse.

[00:06:44] Speaker 00:
You were part of the class section too, right?

[00:06:47] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:06:48] Speaker 00:
So you were a litigant within the class section.

[00:06:50] Speaker 00:
You were representing yourself.

[00:06:54] Speaker 00:
Not just Mrs. Woodley.

[00:06:55] Speaker 01:
But I was representing Mrs. Woodley.

[00:06:58] Speaker 01:
And this really wouldn't have been able to write the brief to this court.

[00:07:03] Speaker 01:
She wouldn't have been able to write the motions for reconsideration.

[00:07:07] Speaker 01:
She wouldn't have been able to fight back against class counsel's attempts to tell this court that her appeal was frivolous in the first case.

[00:07:17] Speaker 02:
Can I just ask you, in what way, if any, is your interest distinguishable from Denise's interest, given the

[00:07:27] Speaker 02:
community property ownership of the land at issue.

[00:07:34] Speaker 01:
Well, there is no evidence in this case about the financial affairs of myself and Mrs. Woodley.

[00:07:48] Speaker 01:
A community property state, there's only a handful of states in the country that have them.

[00:07:55] Speaker 01:
But you don't.

[00:07:55] Speaker 01:
But this is one.

[00:07:57] Speaker 01:
I understand.

[00:07:57] Speaker 02:
Undivided equal interests.

[00:08:00] Speaker 02:
And I thought that the last deed on this puts the whole thing into the ownership of the community so that your claim as an actual plaintiff is indistinguishable in this case from hers.

[00:08:18] Speaker 02:
which makes any fees that you are seeking, um, identically for yourself as plaintiff as for her.

[00:08:28] Speaker 02:
I thought that was the heart of the problem that, um, Judge Leto recognized here.

[00:08:33] Speaker 02:
That's why these fees are effectively for pro se because a pro se plaintiff who is a lawyer doesn't get fees for serving the role of lawyer for himself.

[00:08:45] Speaker 02:
Right.

[00:08:46] Speaker 01:
in the Schneider case versus Collegio Abragados de Puerto Rico from the First Circuit, discussed in the Rickley case.

[00:08:58] Speaker 01:
There, the attorney was representing himself as a party.

[00:09:02] Speaker 01:
And he was also representing another person in an attorney-client relationship, like we have here.

[00:09:07] Speaker 02:
But not for a indivisible, identical interest.

[00:09:14] Speaker 02:
what seems distinctive here, and among other things, what's distinctive about Rickley, where only one of the two spouses was actually a plaintiff, even though they may have had the same injury of retaliation from the county.

[00:09:27] Speaker 02:
Only one of them was suing for her share of the injury, but not the attorney's spouse.

[00:09:36] Speaker 01:
I understand, Your Honor.

[00:09:37] Speaker 01:
But I also understand that there was never a pro se

[00:09:44] Speaker 01:
exclusion under the URA until Judge Lettow made it.

[00:09:49] Speaker 01:
And you don't change the rules of the game after the game has been played.

[00:09:53] Speaker 01:
There was no indication from this judge or from the government that Mrs. Woodley would not be entitled to recover her attorney's fees because she was married to her attorney's spouse or because Mr. Woodley had an interest in the case as a party objector.

[00:10:12] Speaker 00:
but there was another reason that court of federal claims to base this decision and that's that the record is devoid of anything that shows an attorney-client relationship oh that's uh... with all due respect your honor that's not true not true at all yes yes the fee agreement was given to the government uh... it was uh... february 2014 can you cite to the record so we can look at it

[00:10:41] Speaker 01:
I will when I do my rebuttal, Your Honor.

[00:10:45] Speaker 01:
I would like to reserve the balance of my time for rebuttal.

[00:10:48] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:11:15] Speaker 05:
May it please the court, Brian Toth from the Department of Justice, representing the government as the defendant appellee.

[00:11:20] Speaker 05:
Claims court correctly denied Ms.

[00:11:23] Speaker 05:
Woodley's application for attorney's fees by logically applying the rationale and underlying policy of precedence on attorney's fees petitions by pro se plaintiffs, both from the Supreme Court in K and from this court in several cases, Nacol and Pickles.

[00:11:43] Speaker 05:
It's undisputed, I think, that

[00:11:45] Speaker 05:
a pro se plaintiff cannot recover his own fees, his own time spent on his case is not compensable.

[00:11:52] Speaker 05:
That's not an issue.

[00:11:53] Speaker 00:
What about costs or litigation expenses?

[00:11:56] Speaker 00:
Are those recoverable by pro se litigation?

[00:11:59] Speaker 05:
Our position is that they're not under the URA.

[00:12:02] Speaker 05:
It's indistinguishable.

[00:12:04] Speaker 05:
The text refers to both expenses and attorney fees.

[00:12:09] Speaker 02:
I'm sorry, but the background rule from Kay

[00:12:14] Speaker 02:
absolutely distinguishes them as does the underlying rationale.

[00:12:21] Speaker 02:
Obviously there's not a large dollar amount of expenses here, but it's not trivial.

[00:12:27] Speaker 02:
And I guess I do have a hard time seeing that the result ought to be the same for the out-of-pocket expenses and the fees here.

[00:12:40] Speaker 05:
Well, I can only point the court to the text.

[00:12:43] Speaker 05:
I understand your point about the rationale in K, and it is a different statute.

[00:12:48] Speaker 05:
I mean, we're relying on it in our favor for fees by analogy.

[00:12:51] Speaker 05:
I'm pointing you back to the URA.

[00:12:53] Speaker 05:
I understand our position there.

[00:12:58] Speaker 05:
But I would submit that as to the specific expenses that have been identified here.

[00:13:03] Speaker 05:
That would require a remit.

[00:13:04] Speaker 05:
It would require a remand and, you know, several of them, I mean, the cost of the appeal filing fee costs were considered by this court and were not awarded in the first appeal.

[00:13:15] Speaker 05:
The appraisal fee, you know, we make the argument in our brief why it wasn't necessary.

[00:13:20] Speaker 02:
But Judge Leto didn't get to any of that?

[00:13:21] Speaker 05:
Judge Leto didn't get to that.

[00:13:22] Speaker 05:
That's correct.

[00:13:23] Speaker 05:
It is a very small amount that would be at issue on the remand.

[00:13:26] Speaker 05:
I did want to address opposing counsel's representation about the retainer agreement because I think it may not be clear on the face of the filings what happened with that.

[00:13:39] Speaker 05:
An unsigned copy of that retainer agreement from February 2014 was provided to the United States during the proceedings in the trial court.

[00:13:50] Speaker 05:
The United States filed its appellate brief here.

[00:13:53] Speaker 05:
And then after we filed our appellate brief, the appendices were filed.

[00:13:57] Speaker 05:
And in the plaintiff's appendix, this is at page 260, is now a copy of the retainer agreement.

[00:14:05] Speaker 05:
It was never filed with the trial court.

[00:14:08] Speaker 00:
There's no... That retainer agreement's not signed by anybody.

[00:14:12] Speaker 05:
Precisely.

[00:14:12] Speaker 05:
It's got a slash, a slash on it in handwriting.

[00:14:16] Speaker 05:
If you could call that a signature, that could be debated, but it certainly wasn't filed in the trial court, and it's not part of the record on appeal.

[00:14:24] Speaker 05:
If you look at the table of contents... Would that make a difference?

[00:14:27] Speaker 05:
No, I don't think our position turns on the retainer agreement here.

[00:14:32] Speaker 05:
But I am just responding to that as a factual matter because there was some, I think, confusion in the record about that.

[00:14:39] Speaker 05:
Our position is that this court has approached attorney's fees with respect to pro se litigants in a categorical way.

[00:14:48] Speaker 05:
And for better or worse, with K,

[00:14:50] Speaker 05:
It announces a policy.

[00:14:51] Speaker 05:
It does talk about the text of the fee statute it issued there, which included the word attorney.

[00:14:59] Speaker 05:
And from that, the court says, well, it can be inferred that that implies a client relationship, although the court went on to say there are some underlying policy considerations.

[00:15:09] Speaker 05:
And we think those policy considerations have been applied to other fee-shifting statutes by this court.

[00:15:15] Speaker 05:
In NACL, the Equal Access to Justice Act, the fees for a pro se litigant were not available, as well as in the Back Pay Act.

[00:15:26] Speaker 05:
We don't think the URA is meaningfully different from those other instances.

[00:15:30] Speaker 04:
Just to go back to what Judge Toronto and Judge Raina had referred to earlier about the expenses portion of this.

[00:15:37] Speaker 04:
Do you agree that expenses is in a different category than all of the policy issues that propelled the courts in the other attorney fees cases to go the way they did?

[00:15:50] Speaker 05:
That may be, I don't have any ground to distinguish it on a policy matter.

[00:15:55] Speaker 05:
I mean, we could talk about a little bit about the.

[00:16:00] Speaker 04:
Well, did you make that argument in your brief that there's no difference between expenses and attorney's fees if you selected the outcome here?

[00:16:08] Speaker 05:
I think we relied on reasonableness of the saying that these expenses, denying the expenses, was reasonable because they had not demonstrated that the expenses were reasonable.

[00:16:21] Speaker 05:
I understand that's not the ruling that Judge Leto made, but that's the ground on which we defended it.

[00:16:31] Speaker 05:
So, I mean, the purpose of the URA is to make plaintiffs whole when they bring these just compensation claims.

[00:16:39] Speaker 05:
Attorneys fees specifically are not a component of just compensation.

[00:16:44] Speaker 05:
The Supreme Court made that clear in Doheny.

[00:16:47] Speaker 05:
I'm not sure that that case dealt with expenses separately.

[00:16:50] Speaker 05:
Can I just ask, getting back to the facts here?

[00:16:53] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:16:56] Speaker 02:
I think I understand the

[00:17:00] Speaker 02:
for an argument to be that Mr. Woodley in doing legal work for himself was, of course, pro se.

[00:17:08] Speaker 02:
But in doing legal work for Mrs. Woodley, he was not.

[00:17:12] Speaker 02:
And he's entitled to his fees for the second.

[00:17:16] Speaker 02:
Why is that wrong?

[00:17:19] Speaker 05:
Because as the claims court said in its opinion, essentially, he could not

[00:17:26] Speaker 05:
do work on behalf of Ms.

[00:17:27] Speaker 05:
Woodley without also doing work on behalf of himself.

[00:17:31] Speaker 05:
There is no meaningful way to separate the work that advanced his own interest as a pro se plaintiff from the work he did to advance the interest of Ms.

[00:17:41] Speaker 05:
Woodley.

[00:17:41] Speaker 05:
And that's because they jointly hold property interest here.

[00:17:47] Speaker 05:
This court has

[00:17:50] Speaker 05:
different ways to rule in the government's favor that preserve the opportunity of attorney plaintiffs to represent their, or attorney spouses to represent their plaintiff spouse when they are not involved as a plaintiff in the case.

[00:18:06] Speaker 05:
But we think that here, being a plaintiff in the case and being a case where the subject was a jointly held property interest, there has been suggested no way to meaningfully divide the work.

[00:18:18] Speaker 00:
That's for purposes of attorney's fees, but that doesn't apply to costs, does it?

[00:18:26] Speaker 05:
I think that's correct.

[00:18:28] Speaker 00:
And then when you look at 4654C and it's talking about reasonable attorney's fees, it's referring to a plaintiff.

[00:18:39] Speaker 00:
There's nothing there that says that I can read that would prevent

[00:18:45] Speaker 00:
the willies from recovering their costs from disbursements, expenses, then goes on and says, including reasonable attorney, but we know that that doesn't apply.

[00:18:55] Speaker 00:
But I don't see a prohibition against recovering your court costs, for example.

[00:19:03] Speaker 05:
No, I don't have one to suggest.

[00:19:08] Speaker 05:
As to court costs, I mean, just on the facts of this case, as I mentioned, the only cost

[00:19:13] Speaker 05:
court costs he was seeking was for the filing fee of the first appeal and this court already awarded no costs in that person.

[00:19:19] Speaker 00:
They may have photocopy costs.

[00:19:22] Speaker 00:
Don't they have an expert fee expense?

[00:19:25] Speaker 05:
There was an appraisal done and our position was that that was not a reasonable expense, but you know, certainly as Judge Torano suggested, that's... Appraisals are mentioned right here in that statute that I just read.

[00:19:36] Speaker 05:
Right.

[00:19:37] Speaker 05:
I understand.

[00:19:38] Speaker 05:
I mean, it's also

[00:19:41] Speaker 05:
the reasonable costs and expenses, the reasonableness of the appraisal as an issue.

[00:19:47] Speaker 00:
Would it be error for this court to remand to the court of federal claims to determine what reasonable cost litigation expenses were incurred by the plaintiffs?

[00:19:59] Speaker 00:
by the Woodleys?

[00:20:00] Speaker 05:
No, I don't think it would be error.

[00:20:02] Speaker 05:
I mean, we think that the court could decide on this record that the costs and expenses that have been presented are, as a matter of law, not reasonable.

[00:20:10] Speaker 05:
But the court doesn't have to address that issue that way.

[00:20:14] Speaker 05:
It wouldn't be error for the court to remand, I don't think.

[00:20:17] Speaker 02:
And the appraisal fee is basically the rest of the other two expenses or change around the appraisal fee.

[00:20:24] Speaker 05:
They're fairly, yeah, they're fairly significant.

[00:20:31] Speaker 05:
I think I've addressed most of the points that I want to make.

[00:20:34] Speaker 05:
I'll mention I suppose the context of how the Woodleys proceeded.

[00:20:46] Speaker 05:
in litigating their claims.

[00:20:47] Speaker 05:
I mean, we're not contending in any way that they weren't successful in their appeals or that Mr. Woodley was not competent, but certainly that didn't make a difference to the outcome in K where the petitioner there was found to have obviously discharged

[00:21:06] Speaker 05:
his professional responsibilities in a competent manner.

[00:21:10] Speaker 05:
So it's not an individual look at the quality or results of the attorney's work.

[00:21:18] Speaker 05:
In the case, it's that there's a categorical rule and a categorical policy that the court has applied.

[00:21:24] Speaker 05:
So in no way do we mean to disparage Mr. Woodley's work on behalf of himself and his wife, or the results that he achieved for himself or for the benefits to the class.

[00:21:34] Speaker 05:
And I just wanted to make that point, unless the court has any further questions.

[00:21:59] Speaker 01:
Judge Taranto, the letter of agreement in this matter for retaining services of Woodley Law is found at Appendix 260.

[00:22:09] Speaker 01:
And to answer Judge Prost's inquiry, retainer agreements not required for the recovery of attorney's fees under these fee-shifting statutes.

[00:22:23] Speaker 00:
It's required under the rules of professional responsibility.

[00:22:26] Speaker 00:
Absolutely.

[00:22:27] Speaker 00:
Absolutely.

[00:22:28] Speaker 00:
Which is why...

[00:22:29] Speaker 00:
And the letter you sign is not signed.

[00:22:32] Speaker 01:
This is a slash sign.

[00:22:35] Speaker 01:
She did sign the original.

[00:22:36] Speaker 01:
I couldn't put my hands on it.

[00:22:39] Speaker 01:
And I may have sent it to David, who is my co-counsel, throughout this.

[00:22:44] Speaker 01:
Mr. Frederick.

[00:22:46] Speaker 01:
Mr. Frederick, thank you.

[00:22:47] Speaker 01:
I'm sorry.

[00:22:48] Speaker 01:
And they submitted it to the government because the government wanted to see it.

[00:22:54] Speaker 01:
That was fine with us.

[00:22:55] Speaker 01:
And Denise gave her consent to have the fee agreement that she signed.

[00:22:59] Speaker 01:
sent to the government.

[00:23:01] Speaker 01:
It may have been that Mr. Frederick's office sent them the SS number to sign.

[00:23:09] Speaker 04:
But it was never put in the record.

[00:23:10] Speaker 04:
It was never entered into the record in this case, right?

[00:23:14] Speaker 01:
It's possible it wasn't, Your Honor.

[00:23:16] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:23:30] Speaker 01:
The state of Washington does not prohibit pro se attorneys from collecting fees for representing themselves.

[00:23:39] Speaker 01:
And in Stiles versus Kearney, the Washington Supreme Court said that they would not extend the ruling of Kay versus Ehrler to prohibit pro se attorney's fees, because it simply didn't have application.

[00:23:57] Speaker 01:
It was Kay, they felt that Kay was restricted to its facts.

[00:24:03] Speaker 01:
And I agree.

[00:24:05] Speaker 01:
When we look at Washington law, when we look at the Ninth Circuit law represented by Rickley versus County of Los Angeles, and we look at Kay on its very restricted fact pattern, simply Kay is not to be extended to every fee shifting

[00:24:26] Speaker 01:
situation, particularly not when the congressional policies are different, when the language of the statute allowing attorneys fees, in this case was mandatory, the claims court shall award, and the government shall pay.

[00:24:45] Speaker 01:
And seriously, what's most galling, I think, in this case, is after all this work is done,

[00:24:56] Speaker 01:
And after even Judge Letow recognizes that we're going to file separate fee applications because Mrs. Woodley was represented by two counsel in this case.

[00:25:09] Speaker 01:
Not once during that time from 2014 to 2020, for six years, not once did anybody say, oh, you know, Mr. Woodley, you're not going to get your fees.

[00:25:22] Speaker 01:
If that was the case, then,

[00:25:25] Speaker 01:
we would have bowed out and tried to find somebody else to represent Mrs. Woodley so she wouldn't be left holding the bag because what's going to happen here is her just compensation drops down to almost nothing in this case because she doesn't get reimbursed for her attorney's fees.

[00:25:47] Speaker 01:
That's just not fair.

[00:25:48] Speaker 01:
You don't change the rules of the game after the game's been played.

[00:25:52] Speaker 01:
You don't blindside

[00:25:54] Speaker 01:
counsel, you don't blind sign Mrs. Woodley.

[00:25:57] Speaker 01:
She had the courage to stand up and come to this court in 2014.

[00:26:02] Speaker 01:
And this court overturned $33 million in unjust common fund fees that were being taken out by class counsel.

[00:26:14] Speaker 01:
It also overturned the original approval because class counsel hadn't given the proper information that was needed to evaluate whether or not to accept a settlement.

[00:26:29] Speaker 01:
So to change rules at the end of the game is fundamentally unfair.

[00:26:34] Speaker 01:
Judge Scalia in the Kaiser aluminum chemical case said it is unfair.

[00:26:43] Speaker 01:
And non-retroactivity, which is what we're talking about here, perspective versus retroactive.

[00:26:50] Speaker 01:
Non-retroactivity, just resector, is the basis of how we work as human beings.

[00:26:57] Speaker 01:
We all know after a game is played, it's unfair.

[00:27:01] Speaker 01:
We all know that, as just Scalia said in the Kaiser case,

[00:27:07] Speaker 01:
Non-retroactivity has been the basis of law for the Greeks, the Romans, English common law, Napoleonic code, and its fundamental injustice to apply this new exception to the URA of no attorney's fees for an attorney's spouse who may have an interest in the case as well.

[00:27:35] Speaker 01:
to the case after the case is basically concluded.

[00:27:39] Speaker 01:
It's just unfair.

[00:27:40] Speaker 04:
Okay, we're beyond your time.

[00:27:42] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:27:43] Speaker 04:
We thank both sides and the case is submitted.