harvest of about nine and a half million board feet of mostly ponderosa pine on the black hills national forest in south dakota this appealing your honour's it presents a very narrow issue of contract interpretation specifically wyoming s maintains that the trial court erred in concluding that the forest service had not breached the watch timber sale contract when it refused to grant wyoming sawmills two thousand and seven request for a market related contract term adjustment sometimes refer to that is marked sometimes as m r c t a so the issue before this court whether it why only sawmills was entitled to or could ask for reasonably the market related contract term adjustment when it did so in two thousand and seven maybe why we saw mills maintains that it was eligible for merck to him should have been granted worked out and this was a matter of great consequence because they granted the market related contract adjustment would have extended the deadline for the second periodic payment that was a substantial payment of about over a million dollars and also would have extended the deadline for the terminations of the contract that didn't happen in wyoming  so your car moves up to sixty five you're driving sixty five and you get to the next town and the speed limit goes down to fifty five again and you continue to drive your sixty five a you tell it seems to me so tell me what i'm missing that under how you're saying this language should be construed you're not you would argue you're not in violation of the speed limit of fifty five because you didn't cross the fifty five line at the time you were in the fifty five zone and you cross between sixty five zone is that a legitimate analogy to the kind of argument you're making here with respect to the ten year threshold no it is not the reason it is not is because of the plain language of the contract in the regulation incorporated into the contract the language of the contract stated quite on point with the contract stated that as a result of market related contract only addition the contract had to exceed ten years and that was what was prohibited however considering that contract according to its plain language which is what we must  any government contract including a timber contract decision pine case makes that clear the plain language of the contract must be interpreted just going to dictionary definitions and if we look at the meaning of as a result of market related contract a would still be so in the result in the contract exceeding ten years would it not no your honor i don't believe it would and if you look at the merit comic case and particularly the gardner versus brown case that this cited and discussed in the case there isn't there was a dictionary definition of the term as a result of was applied to construe a statute gardner vs brown is instructive because in gardner vs brown there the issue was a contract provision that allowed for veterans to receive some sort of redress if they were injured or there was an exacerbation of an injury for treatment at a veterans administration facility and the court said that there had to be a causal link between the treatment and the injury or the exacerbation there and in this case if we apply that same analogy to the market related contract term addition had to have a causal link to the ten year mark being exceeded in our case the facts of our case were pretty unusual your allowable under the terms of the contract but in this case your honor as we have a much different factual scenario here the contract had exceeded the ten year mark a completely different contract provision had taken it over the ten year mark that was a contractor and just went under one of the b clauses of the timber sale contract and it was done for the convenience but then that could mean that depends on whether or not you wanted to find exceeded you seem to be defining exceeded narrowly like when did you exactly cross the line as opposed to defining what exceeds ten years which is everything in perpetuity ten years and one day why should we write i mean that's kind of the difference here and why would we construe x exceed to be just that one moment in time when it's the ten year anniversary what you're on i do believe gardner versus brown talking about that causal link supports our interpretation and i also think that the policy which i would like to briefly touch on of the service stated that it recognised that many timber companies were holding these contracts that were non profitable and they were facing significant financial hardship as a result the forest service also said we recognize that it's important to have a timber industry infrastructure you need to have these timber industry companies because they're the ones that go out and do the forest restoration in health projects and it was a result of that the forest service stated we believe it's important to have a mechanism to adjust during these adverse conditions and contract and we do believe that under gardener verses frown in a dream or a commie that there has to be a causal link between actually going over the ten year mark and the market related contract when dishan request that was missing in this case your honour's and we do believe that court did err in concluding that worked it was it was appropriately off limits and we would ask this court to reverse the trial court's determination or single question actually i'm missing something here because there are a lot of moving parts in terms of regulations that you put the honor however the forest service promulgated the mark to regulation as a way of explaining the national forest management act section four seven eight two and i can refer you to a federal register citation that doesn't fact indicate that that was the it it might not you know facially you may struggle with why this particular context should have been extended but that there ever been substantial finding is that public interest is served by maintaining the timber in industry infrastructure we do believe contractor to ritually been promulgated but the language originally was not substantially different so there are certainly differences between different terror cell contracts but here are purposes this is a standard you know no your honor i'm not saying that regulation is in violation of the statute we simply take the position that this was a circumstance that perhaps had not quite been contemplated but given the idea that murder was there to maintain timber industry infrastructure and the plain language of the contract and the language in the economy case and also gardner versus brown requiring a causal link between that as a result of murder the contract exceeding the ten year mark where the contract already exceeded ten years as a result of wyoming so mills going in doing other work on the forestry moving timber that was an urgent need of salvage because it was in proximity to a populated subdivision for the benefit of the forest service and the benefit of the public on those grounds with a contract a exceeded ten years it was entitle to additional work there and it wasn't unlimited marked on your honor's recall that under this contract there was a three year limit on the total amount of market that was available to wyoming sawmills that distance changed now companies for the trial courts determine what is the property remedy now in light of the fact that the attempt at the end of the contract had been breached and why only sawmills it's no longer a going concern although we still do we have a three hundred thousand dollars formants bond sitting out there four other ascensions that's correct your honor why only spew is simply an unreasonable interpretation of this contract provision and i'd like to expand upon an example we provided in our brief to explain why that's the case let's assume that this contract had a term of nine years and ten months and wyoming went to the fore it goes to the forest service and says we'd like a two year m r c t a in the forest service says no that would extend the contract beyond ten years so we can't grant that to you but we would give you were short three or four month extension so you can do some additional cleanup work on the site wyoming then would come back and say excuse me that that short extension that short three or four months well and that's the point of my of my example is that asking for an extension even if the contractor is already beyond ten years still results in a contract that is exceeding ten years i think a problem with one problem when one's argument is that made it cleaner but moreover our view of this of the plain language of the contract terms also consistent with the statutes and the regulations in fact adopting wyoming's view would cause the forest service to violate the statute unless there's a finding the better utilization of force resources will result there was no such finding here obviously granting wyoming any more c t a in these circumstances would end up with a sales contract that exceeds ten years  duration and also the statute sixteen u s c for seventy two way while the statute is certainly discretionary there are limits placed upon the discretion of the secretary to extend contracts like this timber contracts one of good point are substantial reading public interest there was that there was never a finding of substantial overriding public interest that would allow this contract to be extended beyond ten years  every finding of substantial reading public interest that applied to this contract also had a ten year limitation language in it as well so it simply isn't correct to say that there is a fine or substantial right of public interest that wouldn't that would allow this briefly rebut on two points first our argument does not conflict with the statute and with the regulation of the separate regulation that was cited if you look at the national forest management acts action for seven to see the statute reads that there can be an extension based on better utilization of the various forestry sources and then it's modified by provided that you can also have an extension either under the purchase or as diligently performed or there is a substantial overriding public interest that justifies the extension sometimes called to be a substantial overriding public interest determination and assume is inherent in a merck determination so when market related contract term addition is warranted under  sale contract shall not exceed ten years and duration unless there is a finding by the chief regarding this better utilization standard so that regulation that is referred to only has the first part of the nif my regulation if you are to read this the regulation the way for service council asks you to you would have to find an altar virus frankly which i don't think anyone is arguing because it leaves off the provided that there are other circumstances when we can extend that contract but you don't have to worry about that because essentially that better utilization and so be substantial overriding public interest determination are and that only gets to one another and i refer you to seventy three february five three eight one seven particularly at five three eight one seven three one  eight this is the federal regulation notice that was cited in the brief for service council a page fifteen in a footnote and there the forest service states a healthy temper industry infrastructure results in the better utilization of the veriest forest resources it goes on to say having numerous economically viable timber sale purchasers isn't a substantial public interest from any resource so basically the so b and the better little ization standards are the same so there is no conflict and just very quickly on that your honour's question judge proceed about the you know what your analogy i would i would assert that if in fact you think you are leaving is better than the one promulgated by the human sawmills and perhaps there is an ambiguity that we need to resolve by looking at some but to take it over the ten year mark which arguably was incorrect and also after the ten year mark had been passed and all the for the forest service indicated in its reply brief that that was due to when the state came over that when the actual term of the low metal