briefing but are not well addressed by the briefs and i'd like to just point out a few facts regarding those matters which i think would benefit the court the first is whether or not the lease as amended requires notice to all of the owners of the property at various times or whether notice to one party was sufficient and the second issue is whether the owner of the property had to actually receive the notices as opposed to whether or not sending the notice and receiving a return receipt signed by any person was adequate for the options before we get to that isn't helping with what lar we applying here this is a federal post office we apply federal common law and if so what is it or do we appl washington law there's a little bit of i would say uncertainty in the case law about that your honor the cases have applied certainly federal common law is the law of decision here and the question is whether or not state law supplements that where there is no federal role or whether the federal common law would use what we would call refer to i think as the best of the common law if you don't if we apply federal common law as to what do we look in connection with  specific performance of a real estate in this case it really real well state lease slash option contract again i think you would look to the generally accepted common law throughout the states you would look at commentators such it wil washington law is that there is no contrary federal rule that has been established by any federal court and so the washington rule regarding the burden of proof is the rule of decision in this case should be applied in this case so it would not make a difference our position also is that it doesn't the one guy on the other guy says he's got that there already and then there's some part of your brief that's in there might be a problem but nowhere where do you see the haul in their argument with respect to the federal contracting at the way certainly him so there is no proof of any authority forgive me counsel i thought that there was a decoration slash affidavit yes or in which people or in charge at the time said they don't they can't find that particular document and we're talking decades ago yes but that they always had that and he was confident that they did have that so far as i know there is no contrary evidence did i miss something there no there were no supervisors or other people in the office or other folks who had personal knowledge of what happened back in one nine hundred eighty two mr duncan's testimony was that he did work in the seattle office at that time he did recognize his signature  document he could not remember what the level of his authority was he did recall having authority he did recall receiving a warrant he just couldn't remember how much it was for and that's the critical factor because words are in certain amounts  forgive me i i'm just looking at my notes here and i see that both duncan and logan provided declarations that you saying that duncan did i mean logan did not provide a declaration oh no he did provide a declaration as well yes i would say that they both provided and they've all said that they had the contracting authority at the time that they acted they recognized their signatures and it was their general practice to it you know clarify and ascertain their authority signing such documents and agree with that or not i do not there was one statement you said in there your honor which is which is not correct if it were true which is that they said they had the contracting authority they did he did not remember whether or not they ha the contract you could not recall you sure yes or you are seventy one you are sixty four so let's say hypothetically yes so hypothetically if they did remember yes but they did recognize their signature and they recognized their normal pattern in the way these things were handled correct is that sufficient i would say not in this case honor because of two reasons one is that particular with mr logan there was evidence that he had less authority later which was highly unusual in the description of the postal service his own witness but secondly we have evidence that the postal service routinely made mistakes simpler still service makes mistakes i thought usually delivery mistakes i know that they are actually contracting mistakes it is a shocking premise i don't see how the fact that they make can make mistakes less is yet decades he lease being basically paid for in force nobody says peep about anything right and i don't see how the fact that this that the postal service might make mistakes in other contracting issues raises a material of an issue of fact here what would be the best authority for that well certainly if one applies the standard the washing cases which is clear and unequivocal evidence that leaves no doubt as to the existence of the contract the fact that mr logan's authority was last ten years later than when he signed the second renewal  turn this around let's assume that it was the postal service that wanted to get out of this contract you'd be yelling and screaming about the fact they had given these decorations and that they had paid the rent for forty years how could they possibly be claiming there wasn't a contract wouldn't you when not exactly what you would be doing absolutely not because the nature of the scientists who sat on such a deal the nature of this contract is these are options the postal service always had the option not to go through with the contract as it evolved over the years so there's no reason there's no way for my quite to object if the post of the service means we're not going to exercise again wear something someone never neverland because we're talking about federal common law and yet somewhat vague but there is a covenant of good faith and fair dealing and you do actually have a very extensive period where both parties acted as if this were they were they were able to do that legally you could have had a unlawful detainer action against of any time right yes yes we could have had we know that you know your rights i'm still looking for the factual issue because he he goes through i'm talking now about mr low then i make it a point to be aware of my authority i signed on behalf of them i have no reason to think i would have signed with my i always signed with delegated authority a more junior person would have preferred the papers  recall no time when i exceeded my delegated authority and so what is the evidence that would raise a material fact  least the evidence that mr logan in two thousand and one had a warrant it was produced in discovery it's part of the record that he did not have adequate contracting authority in two thousand and one that would have allowed him to exercise a second ren he said he didn't have a he didn't recall you know there was a warrant there was a specific warrant that set out in the amount of his authority that that was produced ok and our strange who was the v p of real estate for the postal lease going on for decades right that's right and government employees particularly don't remember things when they get old i'll have to take you know that you're either going to say five minutes or do you want to keep well let me let me go ahead and talk about the two issues that i think are important one is whether or not no to all of the owners was important again that the postal service testified that one representative for was insufficient because the lease requires notice to all of you and why the notice to say you know one of the however many people there were addressed to all of them sufficient raise if you did that would be the fact pattern of the second and third and fourth and fifth you know as it wouldn't be the fact that on the first reno the first renewal was sent only to joe diamond and esther as attorneys in fact for the owners under the lease it was not addressed either to the four owners who had held the property at the time the amendment or to the six owners actually held the property kind of late for the complain about that notice no no your honor because by operation of law a strict construction issue this court in cummings versus bullock said that options are read narrowly they're construed narrowly construed in favor of the person who granted the option and although the result might be harsh that's the nature of options well counsel with respect i written lots of option agreements over the years or so and mentally it's california and not washington but the reality is this is a very badly drafted leasing your clients drafted it and if you know they did not make clear well they they signed this is a postal service form they signed it they never get they never gave notice about all of the changes that occurred it was not confirm some of these people were dead some of these people have sold their interest there was never any notice otherwise in the least so far as i can tell never said whether the written notice had to be given by a particular method which is  common as to be certified mail or whatever don't say that doesn't say that there had be a separate copy to each individual it doesn't say whether you could deliver it through an agent you just didn't say now it's clear under the law as you point out that if the contract specifies that you have to do certain things and they have to comply with it the problem here is that the contract got way way way way out of date and nobody said anything about it and the post office continued to do what was done the last time nobody said anything so i think you've got that bit of a problem if you're trying to be too focused on specifics because your people didn't give specifics the postal service at mit in discovery that they had to serve all of the orders mr strange is testimony this is my question in a situation like this one where you have multiple owners of a property and you haven't received any direction from the owner as to who to notify you would notify all of them correct answer correct is he a lawyer he is the designated thirty six representative of the postal service and he was the party he was the place president of real estate for the postal service a lawyer  not to know he was not ok so you're asking a legal question to a lawyer i'm asking you as a lawyer how you can say that you have to comply with a specific provision of a new but a document that's not in there because in there i get it but i don't see that it's in there i have to out to answer that question your honor and i see my time is up but if i'm just briefly answer that question number one the amendment to the lease did not clue same and in the previous version it did say successors and assigns right it did but it also says here in after call the less or the words here and after called the less or or part of the amendment and the amendment is what granted the options the option provision is part of the amendment document so you cannot divorce that here and after call the less or language from that language and if to the extent that's ambiguous the cummings case by those declarations by the two official saying i was careful to act within my authority counsel has suggested there's some question about logan at page two ninety one of the excerpts of record and it's a many pages of a deposition the fourth page has an exchange where arthur exchange explained that logan's contracting authority was a little later diminished after he was moved to a different office so there really isn't any serious question here that we've proved their contacting authority under the number of normal rules of summary judgment by providing this declaration saying they were careful they acted within their authority within their experience in the government they weren't aware of any period in which they've ever exceeded their contracting authority counsel is there any case law or regulation to which you can cite the court where you have a similar situation where the regulation says you've got to do x y and z in order to sign heim goes by the documents are lost  and the government is trying to assert that it had authority to sign a contract or is there any case that could help us on that well you know there are a number of federal circuit and supreme court and knight circuit cases which recognizes a general principle that when a private party enters into a contract with the government the onus is on the private party to be sure that the individual who signs the contract for the government has authority to do so but that is in all the court of appeals cases i'm aware of that's a shield for the government but not a sword for a plaintiff they can't come in you know years later i'm not aware of a case where they come in years later and say this official you can't produce a warrant if affectively which is that what they're trying to do here are so in other words assuming that it's just a shield for the government to do we didn't just apply normal agency law principles on this absolutely when the government comes in and sa here's the contract here's the signing official it says contracting official that establishes the burden if the other side calls it into question as they did here we can prove that point the way we did here with with  am i correct that both the decorations of mr duncan and mr logan state that there was authority and that there is nothing to the contrary in the record as yes right ok th e district court correctly determined that the postal service is entitled to specific ferments on its purchase option the postal service performed all the material terms of the contract for fifty years what about the notice point give the less or notice of election to purchase at least one year in advance there's no serious question that we complied with that requirement we have a certified mail return receipt that went to the address of record and we have  statement by their thirty six representative that that they receive the notice now they say we also have to show is that the government's position that the purchase option stands alone is not a part of the lease the our position is to the extent you're going to apply a heightened standard to our performance that heightened standard only applies to the purchase option we don't have to establish every element of performance or the party's relationship over the last fifty years by height standard we just have to show that the purchase option was certain and that's what i think and the argument that he made as i understood it is you might be correct that the notice was given with the when you're in advance but if the option expired or dissipated years earlier because of lack of notice to the less orders then it wouldn't matter what happened in the most recent incarnation that is their contention that is their contention and that's wrong for a couple of continued to pay rent and defendants continue to accept it second i think critically after those renewals the defendants twice offered a million dollars to the government to strike the purchase option from the lease if it was very understanding that there was that circumstantial evidence that shows that the that the less stores recognize the validity of the lethal yes as they were white with presenting yes that's right and the cases general principles of contract law established that that once a dispute arises about a contract the best way to tell what the parties understood it's a look at what they did before the dispute arrived and so the fact that they were the third piece of that circumstantial evidence i was going to point to is that their attorney in arguing as well that based on their conduct they are stopped yes claim yes that the lease was terminated or that the purchase office was off or was terminated that's right we're making both of those arguments we also have an argument that we did together they renew it  because we provided notice to edward astor and joseph diamond and those were the two people who we had most recently been informed and we were informed of this in the one nine hundred sixty eight amendment where the owners were and his wife and diamond and his wife and given a one single address and we sent the notice to them at that single address now we didn't name the wives as well but under general principles of agency it's it's more common place but that doesn't necessarily mean that that the least then the option we're still valid that is their position that we've been a holdover tenant since one thousand nine hundred two right but as i said they've acted contrary to that understanding in the three ways identified the other thing i think it's important to know is if you are if you have an option if you are subject to an option to renew a lease so if you were the last four and you've given someone an option and that person provided you provide you with imperfect notice and we know there was some notice in one thousand nine hundred two to at least one of the parties you or your you have either a right to validate that if we're correct that renewing a leas continues the existing contract or you have a right to either reject the offer in general and option as an offer that the off that the less work can't refuse so you can either accept it through your conduct when you receive imperfect notice or you can reject it by bringing it up and action for an object ment or some other action against the government and they didn't take any affirmative steps to indicate that they thought we were a holdover tenant and contra that they took affirmative steps to indicate that they understood that we continued to be to have a leasehold under the one nine hundred sixty three excuse me contract that when an option is accepted imperfectly that that creates some sort of a contract if the less or does not object that is not the law that is not what happened in heritage that it's not what happened in sunshine development that's not what happened in cali the rule regarding options is you have to comply strictly that is the blackletter rule if you do not comply strictly it's ineffective and it's not like normal offer and acceptance rules where an offer that  acceptance that it's not meet the terms of the offer would be a counter offer under normal contract principles that's not the rule that applies in options consul you your opposing counsel mentioned that the option came later in the process and that the option itself has virtually no detail notice requirement in it issued correct that we like just at that or do we refer back to the lease in which it was eight and it is a bit looser than the renewal options in that it does not require notice be given in writing it does in that particular case where you have a lesser notice with respect to the purchase option don't we like to the specific instead of the general one we construe a contract generally we certainly look to the specific that's correct we construe options narrowly that's that's the rule in the cummings  numbers correct and so we when we look at the earlier prefer the earlier exercise of the options it says notice has to be given to the lesser council said that the first notice was given to one of the lessers there is no proof of that these return receipt is illegible there was no evidence that any of the lesser its rich received that first receipt noise events whatsoever there's evidence that they thought they had a lease there's evidence that they got the ranch all the time and they paid half in her own sense their own separate estate and half as the trustee of the trust and it just and it's your position that unless the government specified then current ownership as a title insurance company would do that the option could be exercised correctly is that correct and no it is our position that they have to prove that mrs nestor mrs loraine esther the owner of the property actually received it and what you look to in the lease that says they have to do that given to the less or that's what the lease says that the notice has to be given to the last or that's that's the language and interactions it depends on how you define given thank you for your argument thank you both counsel for your argument this morning united states postal service versus bellevue post office is submitted