matter of right the district court action below was a proceeding to enforce a september two thousand and seven two point six five billion dollar default judgment against the islamic republic of iran and in favor of the peterson plaintiffs mr cook was engaged to identify assets to satisfy that judgment and to assist in the recovery of those assets and nearly two billion dollars was recovered he filed his motion to intervene in june one two thousand and sixteen because a proposed distribution order which the court was about to issue  for and he was out of the picture many years before this my question was why he expected anybody to look out for his interests  of whether they were friends or not or whether they were lookout alternately for his interest or not is not the issue on under rule twenty four for intervention for example in the butler fitzgerald case which i have to argue th land of the that don't you have to argue that somehow he he believed that he was going to be protected until he until the distribution order i believe not your honor respectfully and the reason i believe that's not true is that under rule twenty four a to a party winter viens is a party in all respects in the action now cook did not have to become a party to the action in order to proceed with his claims or to protect his lien at that time the ferns from from two thousand from early on from two thousand and eleven before he was terminated the funds were all in custodial aegis they were under control of the court up to and done till june sixth two thousand and sixteen so those funds were protected and he did not need to take any further action to protect those funds because no distribution could occur until further order were i'm puzzled at the time that he is discharge when i understand you have an argument that the discharge was not properly for cause are you arguing that it was not even said to be it's a mistake and understands your correct me if i'm wrong but my understanding is that it attaches upon discharge if the discharge is not for cause and it doesn't attach if it is for cause so why isn't it incumbent on a lawyer who is fired from a case who knows that he is the people that the client believes it's for quote asserts that it's for cause why isn't it incumbent on the lawyer at that point to a cert lean and then do whatever needs to be done in the litigation or elsewhere to adjudicate whether the lien attaches or not if you and i and if the answer is going to include that when that happened nobody actually thought this was ever going to lead to real money why isn't that true in every case where a lawyer has it is retained on a contingency or something is discharged early in the proceedings and no one knows at that point whether there's going to be a judgement or not ok there are there are two reasons let me address your honor's the first part of your honest question first it's clear in the new york law that you don't have to do that you don't have to proceed in that way not merely under th for to determine his lien at any time and he not do it at the moment of discharge and there's some discussion as to whether or not the attorney's acts have to express some interest in receiving a contingency determined by district of columbia law so the con case is a complete answer to your honor's first question he doesn't need to do it at that time and in fact his interest is under rule twenty four a one of the things he has to prove is that his interests are not being adequately protected their his interests were being adequately protected by my friend mr bonner i don't think you'll disagree with that by theodore olson who argued in the united states supreme court if what happened after he was discharged was an ongoing litigation now in the butler fitzgerald case i started to mention which i didn't highlight sufficiently in my brief judge cartman's opinion for this court made clear that the question of whether discharge of an attorney in a charging lien by itself gives a right to intervene under rule twenty four isn't settled in the circuit and here if you look at the red ball case you want to look where the when the threat to his interest first occurs and in order to satisfy the balancing test of rule twenty four more which is to allow for official litigation and not inefficient intrusion into litigation you know order to allow if that balancing test to occur you wait until the interest is truly threatened no one is not truly threatened until june until the end of may two thousand and sixteen when the person is to be shorter came out and even if you go backwards to thirteen i believe it was but that order did not date to the extent that you could read that order to pose a threat and i think that's an inappropriate over reading of that water because the funds were still protected by the court if you  the notices of appeal in the case for summary judgment were filed in less than thirty days following the issuance of that order so upon that filing of the notice of appeal the district court would not continue to exercise jurisdiction over any motion to intervene so the delay is really thirty days and i understand the footnote in the levin case which your honor sat on the panel that issued that that it may not be jurisdictional as a matter but it is a matter of the court's precedent in jurisprudence that the district court will not act and in fact judge forrest had in other cases made clear that she in eleven itself that she felt she had no jurisdiction to entertain intervene after the appeals were filed so that carves out everything from august of two thousand and eleven until may twenty four i believe it was a made or may twenty when this court issued it mandate in the case and why in days of the issuance of this court's mandate the provos distribution order was was presented to the court we recognize the threat to cuts interest and we filed the mediately and that is an unusual circumstance in this case militating against the finding of an timeliness and i think it's also supported by and judge lawyers opinion in the row which i understand as to what happens well i was at the i was at the argument there your honor and i think if if anything the court will avoid the constitutional question and find the actual standing justice kennedy made pretty clear that was his opinion that's what if any and the thing is the effect of the district of columbia courts washington d c when yes i think i think that's an excellent question and the answer is nothing and the reason it's nothing is because cooks lean under d c law arises out of an express indication in the retention agreement that he has to be paid out of the recovery of against the judgment and the district court's opinion is under appeal in the sea third circuit and we think there was such an express intention in the contract but even if there weren't the issue in new york is statutory under section four seventy five it's a protection for any attorney funds where there is a recovery of assets in new york and that protection that statutory right to have a lien does not depend on the agreement of the client there need be no scheduled for a hearing commencing on the very twenty eighth the parties the attorney defendants have resisted in every way possible for moving their case forward but we finally got a trial date the c against the peterson plaintiffs was severed and stayed and probably will be stayed until the district of columbia rules we do not have a an argument date in the district of columbia but we've been told it would be in the fall here in the southern district of new york that cook was the one who located the assets that were the subject of the proceeding here in new york that cook then immediately proceeded with enforcement proceedings in new york by registering the judgment under rule sixty nine and twenty eight u s c i believe it's twelve sixty three the he then of we and restrain those assets kept those as a practical matter that interests me the money that mr quinn is asserting a claim to is that in addition to any fees that would be taken out of this total award by other attorneys or is it a dispute among the lawyers about how to carve up some total amount of the tourney the plaintiffs in the case well your honor that i have two answers to that as to the first part of your honor's question that doesn't depend on us it depends on the attorneys as to whether the the other attorneys whether they assert that cooks fee is  cost which they are entitled to recover from the plaintiffs it appears from the reports of the q s if trustee which had been submitted in the at the most current one is the third supplemental appendix that was a settlement may not be that the right term because i'm not suggesting something that would finally adjudicate all of this or resolve all these disputes but that there would be some way of the various lawyers involved agreeing on some resolution that whatever happens here is not going to compromise the interest of the the ultimate point is that and that what we're talking about is a fight among lawyers about though it is not in the record after the d c circuit came down and said it's not a claim against the plaintiffs it's a claim against the attorneys we have immediately moved before justice crane in arbitration and said we're willing to accept that judgment and withdraw our peal if the attorneys are willing to agree to abide by that order in other words we we proffered exactly the solution your honor proposed and the attorneys refused to do that so we're concerned that they're going to try and play rope a dope with us and in the proceeding in the district court say it's only with the attorneys which they actually said in papers they made such a representation and then in the arbitration will say no it's only against the plaintiffs you have to chase fourteen hundred people so what we want to do the right now there are seven hundred million dollars that is continues to be with us have trust and that's seven hundred million most of that or a good portion of that belongs to the attorneys and some portion belongs to the plaintiffs about two hundred million we don't have to figure out where the two hundred million is coming from as long as alina attaches to those funds there is also the six fifty fifth they have a new litigation which your honour's may be aware of and kirshenbaum case sent that back for trial that the plaintiffs in this case i understand could receive as much as sixty percent or so of the recovery in that case which is expected to be between a billion dollars and a bill one point five billion dollars i think it's also relevant to your honor and perhaps your honour's family as well that the plaintiffs would not be getting any of the nearly two billion dollars not a penny we believe if it was not for the actions of that may or may not be so certainly if it were not for the efforts of the lawyers collectively nobody not trying to denigrate the fine work then by mr boehner and his colleagues i'm just saying that as of september two thousand and seven ten billion dollars of judgments had been entered against iran for terrorist activities ten million dollars one twentieth of the amount that cook found had been recovered so so it is a significant contribution and truly if there should be some that's for the arbitration that's for the arbitration you very much thank you honor thank your honour's my name is jim wagner may please the court it's my great honor to stand before you as a representative of reinvest in the marine family members with your pelleas in this case as you just heard mr cook is demanding a hundred ninety million dollars charging l indeed today he raised that two hundred million dollars charging lee and that includes ten percent of all the funds that were recovered by all of the claimants in this case including hundreds and hundreds of people that mr cook never represented we're not i mean we're doing is it wouldn't matter if it was ten men or two hundred men or more twenty thousand which is making it really should've been allowed to be to intervene and the reason why that's relevant your honor is that it relates to some of the prejudice that arises from mr cook sitting on his hands and waiting for five years after establishes their prejudice to anyone other than and i guess this is not a small matter or an irrelevant matter other than the lawyers  what what it would be the problem with having some kind of standstill agreement that allows all of the funds to be distributed to the plaintiffs that the plaintiffs are entitled  promptly and if mr cook isn't allowed to nothing will find that out and if he's entitle to a lot of money we'll find that out and we won't be holding the the people that you started by saying you're honored to represent hostage to a problem and the attorneys need of course attaches to the client's recovery and so there's a great danger here of that's if we have to adjudicate that and if we wind up saying that he is entitle to intervene to assert this l i'm asking why the lawyers can't get together and work out something if it is the case and maybe it isn't but if it is the case that this is not a cost it is part of the total attorneys fees and anything that he gets somewhere between zero and two hundred million dollars will come out of the total award of attorney's fees why can't the attorneys distribution be agreed to be held up known lien is asserted the money goes to the point ifs and you guys fight in the arbitration and if you are right you win and he gets nothing and everybody's happy except him or if he wins that's because the arbitrators decided he was an idol to him is there a problem with that i think there are a number of problems with that your honor number one is as the court is recognized people for in this case for fifteen years in order to get a recovery people have gone into a great deal of debt attorneys in order to pay for  litigation that was fought for that length of time people want to get there at their fees and the reason why mr cook can't hold up all of this payment not only to the parties but also to the attorneys is that he sat on his hands for five years has an agreement and there's been no demonstration no claim no contention that there's any reason why messrs fay and pearl s can't pay whatever fees are awarded to mr cooke in that arbitration that attorney's lien is a different one of two things is if if that statement is true that they can pay that means one two things it either means that they are very rich people word means that if they get this award of fees they're going to have to be setting some of it aside against the contingency that they lose the arbitration right honor and listen if we were talking about a reasonable amount of money here i think that people would at some point agree to put a reasonable amount of money aside but what we have here is a system in for two hundred million dollars to be set aside when the case law is absolutely positively clear that mr cook under no set of circumstances is ever going to be paid two hundred million dollars he was discharged five years before this litigation ended the case law says that the most that he could possibly attain as a fee in this case is the amount of money that is his proportionate share of all of the work that was done by all of the attorneys in the case now that if we start going down on its design as i've understood this the amount of money is the main obstacle to in the interim between the time that mr cook was discharged and the time that this money was recovered there was a settlement entered into by not only the marine clients but there were you can see in judge peterson or  judge forest opinion in the peterson case granting a summary judgment there were twenty groups of different plaintiffs twenty one of which mr cook ever represent and he's claiming this lean on all of the recoveries of all of those people now some of that money has been distributed to those folks are ready so to we're going to have a grave grave problem on our hands if mr cook gets a two hundred million dollar attorney's lien trying to figure out who is going to be responsible for the payment of that lien and that gets back to that what i think is really the important point here  is that the record to five is the contention that is the baseline of mr cook's appeal which is that there was no threat to the payment of his two hundred million dollars in attorney's fees until two thousand and sixteen he was discharged in two thousand and eleven he was told at that point in time that it was for charge he did absolutely nothing at that point in time although the case law is crystal clear as you pointed out i think judge lynch that at that point time he had the right under new york law to come into court and say i have a lien on these funds and what the case also says and what all of his arguments ignore is that before he can attain an attorney's lien he has an obligation to show that he was not discharged for cause and he has never made any argument saying that he was not discharged for cause in fact what he tells us is that this court and the district court has no right even to consider that issue that they need to set all of this money aside without him making any de demonstration that it was not discharged for cause and one thing he points out in his brief is that this court in forced that rule that i'm talking about in the wise heart opinion it was a summary order but it should be no surprise that there's plenty of case law for that including the court of appeals decision in  e and other cases so mr cook waited for five years after his discharge then in two thousand and thirteen the plaintiffs attain their judgment he didn't know at that point time that there was going to be a qualified settlement fund creat even after they attained judgment and the money could have been paid over the next day to the police as he did absolutely nothing he sat on his hands he waited for all of the appellate proceedings in this case to be resolved three years later and as i said in the interim between the time he was discharged and the at which the money it was was ready to be distributed there was a very important settlement entered into by not only the the group of clients that he represented but groups of clients were represented by many many lawyers many many people who are entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars strategic decisions were made with no idea that mr cook would one day come into this court and say i am entitled to money that was paid to people that i never represented and so it's very important also a excuse i don't think that that's true your honor i think that that's a collateral issue of whether he had an attorney's lane that's an issue that was in order in the briefs but i'm fairly certain that that's an issue that the district courts could have taken up as a collateral issue that was not something it was on a concern reason why the cohen case is is not very important here your honor is that it was not a case that considered whether there was an abuse of discretion by a court in denying intervention so cohen says yes it does say that you can enforce your lien  what it does not say is that you can sit on your hands for five years while all these developments go on an obligation importantly there was no issue of cause whatsoever in the cohen case there is no issue of abuse of discretion and all that the court held an ak a swiss that if you represented the client on the very same cause of action that they ultimately recovered on that you could have a lien and a portly in the common case the outgoing lawyer again no issue of cause gave notice to the fact that he was expected to be paid on a percentage basis at the end of the case no such notice ever been provided by mr cook in these circumstances and i think your honour's we did address in our brief with respect to the abuse of discretion standard the cases that he tries to build that argument on are not cases that involve an abuse of discretion or even cases that allow people to intervene in the rebel case which is the that the number one case that he cites all that the court found in that circumstance was that the person who had not been discharged because who was holding the client funds in his trust account didn't have to move to attain it and attorneys lean because there was no risk at all to the payment that he was going to receive that couldn't be further from the truth here he was discharged he was told he was being discharged for cause there was judgment entered five years past it has absolutely nothing to do with the principle case that he bases his opinion on the lateral state's case your honor your case is another case he brings up only in reply no abuse of discretion found in that case and all the courts found was that you can't have a timely motion to intervene when a case is at its very beginning the court explicitly said this case is not at its eleventh hour and it was not going to be any prejudiced anyone with this situation is totally different from the the state's case here we have someone coming in at the eleventh hour this is post judgment he's coming in and saying that he has an opportunity to intervene and there's going to be prejudiced to lawyers to the parties potentially and also certainly to these people who were never represented by mr cook who is now claiming that they owe him money two more points your honor which at which i think are critical here to keep in mind the answer to that what happened in d c doesn't affect what's happening here i don't even understand that he was told in d c that he doesn't have a leak and if he doesn't have a lien in d c then he doesn't have a lien because the second point i want to make is that he told the court in d c that he never even argued here in new york that he had a new york lien never argued so the first time that he ever argued that he had a new york living under section four seventy five is when the briefing was put into this court six years after his terminations so if ever there were a case where a waiver would occur it has to be this one he has an obligation under the intervention rules to move in a timely fashion but he admitted that he never made his argument in the court of appeals in a very important case kaplan says that if you have an attorney's lien and you fail to to move within a reasonable period of time to enforce that leave you forfeit that lien five six years in the middle of a one point nine billion dollar litigation with many people's rights being settled along the way that is just way too long for a lawyer to wait to try to enforce his lien so both because of the fact that he's lost in d c the only ever certain and the fact that he has admitted in the d c papers that he never even asserted a new york lien here in new york he has no lien to enforce now there are a number of substantive reasons why he doesn't have a lien your own and i'd be glad to address them those are addressed in the brief and i see that my time is up i don't know whether th very much ok thank you for our use of three minutes and i appreciate the courtesy because i was way over time before to address out so i'll be as quick as i can first of all kaplan does not apply to the circumstance because kaplan was a third party right money was paid out of not from from the plane of two with third party and the court said that the third party was prejudiced because they were weren't aware that you were going through a certain explicitly stands for the proposition that you don't have to assert the lien at any time it's automatic it's matter of statute it's not a matter like for example in the d c circuit you have to file a notice of lien that's not true in new york or you have to do is it the person who has the money if he's aware of the lien before he pays out the money he pays it out at his risk now normally an attorney certainly my experience attorneys who believe they have liens don't intervene in actions they file a notice on the defendant and say don't play the pay of the plaintiff without paying me and that's the equivalent of what we did here we did serve the trustee of the q s have trust with noticeably in the q s s trust was a qualified settlement fund trust which was established pursuant to court order in under the jurisdiction of the court and the court directed that that fun held in administered and under the court's direction and no funds be released until further order of the court when was which was that you spoke  fund order was in july of two thousand and thirteen summary judgment decision was entered in march we didn't notify the q s l fund trustee until it appeared that the was about to be authorized to release the funds so we know that's that's and i think it was at the end of may but yes the notice actually the the notice of lien is dated may ninet approximately yes within days and but the funds were still there so in the same way that if we notified a defendant on pay the plaintiff as long as the payment hadn't been made it's timely with respect to the settlement with other parties that settlement is secret we've never seen it they refused to disclose it but those parties got thirteen percent of the settlement proceeds payable to plaintiffs we believe that that settlement also provides for the other attorneys to be paid by those plaintiffs because the work that was done by them and we assert by cook produce the funds that were being divided up but we don't know the terms so it may be that there is no prejudice to anybody the money that went to these other plaintiffs may be subject to the same attorneys lean the attorneys maybe maybe didn't compromise their position and we don't know a lot of maybes but thank you