thank you and stay safe and help you too present i am your honor and is mr barron also here the case was moot the seats were voluntarily dismissed the court's jurisdiction had lapsed and any case or controversy had ceased to exist that action exceeded the court's jurisdiction and even if the court somehow had jurisdiction the court's attempt to rewrite the federal rules d on the fly violates the outer bounds of inherent authority it contradicts the express and implied commands of rule forty one dollars a rule twenty three dollars and rule eleven c five and it exceeds the express authority found in the t s r a inherent authority is designed to be used sparingly it cannot trench upon the careful calibrated limits of positive law and it cannot exercise authority the congress and the rules committee have withdrawn in this case congress and the rules committee occupied the field so let the court mr guys you let me ask you a question of characterization this case seems to of tried to end with the rule forty one dollars a a one capital a dismissal but looking at the court's ultimate disposition there's there are two ways of thinking about it and they seem to be blended in some of the briefing here and i think we need to pull them back apart again one of them one way to look at it is as the district court reconsidering whether if it had any power over that forty one a one  dismissal reconsidering the merits of judges saying well and walgreen you know you should get rid of cases right away maybe there should have been a dismissal for failure to state a claim even without a motion kind of a merits based consideration the other possibile way of looking at it is as part of the court's authority to regulate proceedings before itself in this sanctions kind of way like we're going to sanction you for filing a case  was so lacking in merit that it should never have been filed but the court's analysis doesn't really read like a sanctions analysis it reads like a merits analysis but but the power to reconsider something certainly does last beyond the dismissal of the cases supreme court's been very clear about that so how do you understand the nature of this order that we are being asked to review  we understand it in the formal way not the latter i think the court was clear in saying that what it was doing is by taking a cue from this court's language in walgreens it assumed it had the authority and in fact the obligation to look at a case and decide on its own without a motion to dismiss whether it should have dismissed that case on out of hand it applied the walgreen standard which is one reserved for class settlements it has nothing to do with evaluating the merits of a complaint which in any event is usually processed through the federal rules which are very detailed and careful in how courts are supposed to evaluate a complaint once it's filed they do not act to respond today they wait for an answer  correct that is correct which is precisely why the court had no power at that point to do anything else and what the court did do and just to further answer your question a chief judge would the courts and now if this did not include any point anything that hints of sanctions  authority didn't use the word sanctions it was applying again a heightened standard of review it didn't ask whether the parties or their counsel had acted in bad faith it didn't bear any of the hallmarks that one would expect to see if the court were power and in fact the plaintiffs below told the court because the court's jurisdiction had lapsed due to the forty one dismissal if the court wanted to continue to look at the case it was obligated to conduct a sanctions analysis and the court did not take that invitation and instead reference walgreen and said this should have if in theory this where it was frivolous on its face then it should be dismissed out of hand now by the way this is a case obviously wasn't for melissa on its face because it required the court to bring the parties back after the case was fully resolved out of court it was the substantive allegations were mooted the parties all any remaining sliver of dispute over fees in a private contractual settlement out of court and the judge had to compel the parties to come litigate the underlying merits of the complaint again under a standard that really is reserved for evaluating a class settlement which is high end because the parties are giving away absent class members claims so that you can i ask you  question you're not taking the position i think although i'm asking you are you taking the position that just records have no power at all on their own to look at a complaint that's been filed and to have to wait for two of the six motions no i we're not saying a categorical rule but i do think the exception i want to be very clear about this is exceedingly narrow it's when it's when the complaint is so frivolous on its face it almost isn't really a complaint though that power although it is existed it's clear it's tailored and narrowed to that context there is no authority that's expressed in any federal provision of the federal rules of civil procedure that says that courts when they get any complaint can simply dismiss it if they disagree with it normally what happens is unless it is so patently frivolous on the on its face then the court does wait for the adversarial system to kick in and they rely on defendants to assert their right and congress and the rules committee in this particular situation have relied specifically on the defendants to initiate this process they have armed the sophisticated corporate defendants with very talented and able corporate litigators to look at a complain and if it's frivolous they have every right to file a motion for rule and sanctions they can move to dismiss the complaint if they get the client the complaint dismissed under the p s l or a the judge is required to conduct a mandatory sanctions review and to see if the complaint satisfied the standards under rule eleven and then to there's a presumption in favor of awarding the defense counsel's fees if the complaint fails that standard so congress and the rules committee were very careful in drawing a detailed scheme in this very setting aware of the potential for abuse of securities litigation and abuse of class litigation and they've created rules and procedures that are designed to ferret out those bad complaints and to compensate the defendants for the costs of defending them but what doesn't exist it is the power that the judge invoked here and to be very clear this is not a situation where the court did look at the complaint and say this is absolutely frivolous on the face the court looked understand the judge reviewed all of that from a technical point of view there are some footnotes to this appeal concerns only mr house but then mr  separately docketed appeal so i wonder if you could tell me about that and also tell me as specifically as possible what you envision the relief being that you're looking for here  sure your honor for the st point i believe the footnote to your honor's referring to maybe in the intervention appeal in that case mr frank only took an appeal from the denial of intervention in the house case consolidated by this court so both are before the panel in terms of the relief that we're seeking we're seeking to to vacate the court's order which will have the effect of reinstating the private agreement between the parties to settle the fetus again this was in order that abrogated a private contractual agreement without any authority in any federal rule or any statute it said that because the court section seventy eight you asked for a six almost uncomprehensible citation but it mars awards season unless the shareholders benefit is out of federal statute on point your honor that that is a federal statute it is not on point and we address this we dress this issue in our briefing and if you look at page four in five of our reply brief it's footnote two and if you look at the specific language of a six it st is limited to the context where there's been a certified class it says it's talking about damages awarded to the class so in this case where the class is claims are moo it does not apply it applies only to situations where you're looking to whether any damages awarded are reasonable there are cases like this disclosure cases where there aren't there is non monetary remedies  off by the class and they can be obtained by the class and in this case it is a social good to file disclosure claims and to have the material provided to the shareholders before the vote on the merger and thereby avoid damages you're saying two things as i understand it one that the statute applies not to cases broadcast class actions but to cases certified as class actions and we may have to decide that question and the other is you're saying that if the agreement between the parties purports to bypass the court instead of running through it the statute is awarded him are right about understanding where you're where you are in part your honor and need to be very clear our st contention is a statute does then apply for some of the reason he stated and for the reason that this only applies in the context of making sure that any few award when looked in relation to it and you are you're down to about a minute if you'd like to save any rebuttal time i would your honor thank you all right thank you mr barron so are you saying that we do not have a brief or an argument then on the other side of this appeal my understanding is that  here maybe my cards are just wrong this is closely related to the other appeal in which we will be hearing from you mr frank so i would ask the panel if they have any further questions for m and if not then we will i think take this case under advisement and move on to the related closely related appeal in number for house against acorn anything further any last word mr guys are the only thing i'd like to to finish with on the a six issue your honor is that one reason that parties do settle cases is to avoid litigation over the construction of statutes like this potentially the the meeting is a six could have come up had a few motion been filed but the party settled the issue out of court and usually when parties do settle disputes out of court and they resolve a case o controversy that's a good thing and it's not up to the district courts to try to create additional work so with that unless or further questions where we're happy to submit all right i hear none so we will take this