good morning good morning thank you and may please the court in hand next verses jeremih this course stated that no contract is necessary for tortious interference claim with business relations and it was also stated in business right for tort yet be malicious and to be malicious it means in part that it doesn't serve any legitimate purpose business or otherwise of the person who is alleged to have interfered stated that i was an employee or i had an employment relationship with had affair that's not true i had of counsel relation and a business relation that's one aspect the district court said i was associated with had are there that's not correct i was never your from it but you were doing business and there was your honor i would just like to clarify that point when i started the case for the two bank checks i mean i mean versus the so they knew from the beginning that handor thier had no involvement with the underlying case against the k b c and also when this when this court your honor and to the july sixteenth order it said called handler thayer and they have no legal basis even if i had this of counsel relationship they have no legal basis to threaten or harass handler if they're with three consecutive emails which had a cumulative effect reatening and this order only the ink was not even dry on this water they had not even submitted any invoices whatsoever which goes to the malice as soon as the the court entered that order immediately like a bull and they were shooting these e mails to tom handler ok saying if mr abbas doesn't pay we're going to look to you to pay the way have you paid that's under appeal your honor because of for those seventy tape attorney client privilege material right and also they they overbuilt it they will never get to see what attorney client privilege well i had the right to challenge it according to school at the overstaffed it with five lawyers which you know is pretty fancy footwork i mean but it ain't the n b a i mean it's not a basketball court this is a court of law you know they needed five lawyers on this seventy two hundred hours when that motion could be responded to in a few hours so i appealed that judgment for the seventy five thousand dollars you're on a substantial amount well the reason for that is what's wrong with that is because they misused an order from the second circuit the second circuit said that made them in as pure a limited which is the illinois corp and myself lawyer you use their letter here didn't you i use their letterhead just in two thousand and fourteen when i developed the relationship with them so for the prior two years oh sir wall the conduct that came came it was entered i bet time i had the relationship but before that i did not have the relationship and yes when i when i when i received the e mail from handler thayer and they put my bio on their website and they said ok you're of counsel with a law firm and it was a very valuable relationship for me you know it took time to develop it and to stablish it and i and i worked on developing these to tax clients for them overseas and for us to have to collaborate together so i did put their email now i can understand maybe for  and the letterhead then i used it but again when did you start using the word this was in april two thousand and fourteen i believe a procedure on ok i would like to go through the elements of the tortious interference claim with business relation we we do what we have briefing ok so the the point is that i want you revenge for the motion to disqualify now one of the underlying things that i noticed in the district court's opinion is that judge sullivan did not want to deem any of my allegations as true which normally you know under r important the first fact is they misuse an order of the second circuit they want to round with waiving that order of the sensor which did not apply to handle a fair number two they knew they could not legally collect a penny from handlers they are because it was of counsel relationship and number three they sent e mails directly to handler thayer threatening them with sanctions and fees and then when i asked them please stop harassing her there they sent another email saying we'll decide how to collect so no hundredth there are feeling ok we might be subject to collection proceedings and then the last email which had the cumulative effect the last email said well we see your name is linked to the website and so on and and  is linked so now howler thera gets three emails one threatening sanctions and fees one threatening collection proceedings and one seeing saying that i'm linked to their website ok so they decided to terminate the relationship the next day correct that when the sanctions order was issued by this court who was who was administering the sanctions were there that this court sent to back down to judge sullivan to determine what's reasonable and also allowed me the right to challenge  complaint does not even come close to satisfying the standard for tortious interference claim but rather it seems designed like many of plaintiff's previous missions to prolong litigation to continue to harass or ic on behalf of as a result of the f representation of k b c based on this the district court ruled that the claim was vexatious it was clearly meritless and also based on mr abbas's long record of such litigation the court entered a filing injunction against him they ruled that that this claim warranted rule eleven monetary sanctions but they wouldn't be entered here respectfully we posit that the district court's decision was correct and we would ask that you affirm and i would like to briefly address a few issues that liability responding at superior or certainly a credible legal basis for asserting that hammer thayer could be on the hook for for these sanctions but i think it's also important to remember that under the third element of a tortious interference claim the court and carvell say there's two ways to prove that third element one of those ways is a crime or independent tort and i don't think that anybody has suggested that the conduct here is a crime or an independent to is to show that it was done for an exclusively wrongful purpose and the key word there is exclusively and if you look at the case law interpreting that certain element you'll see that there are plenty of instances in which an allegation that contact was made for some nefarious purpose is found not to be sufficient if there is a credible independent economic reason if if you  pleasure to get him for that is what the law says your honor and this court held in catskill development that the third element was not satisfied where there was a legitimate business interest that was promoted by the  contact even if the contact otherwise asserted some kind of pressure and that's the same thing if you look at that has an expense in case which was cited by the district court they said that the third element was not satisfied where informing clients that an attorney had appendix in this case it supplemental annex thirty four thirty eight the the email itself seeks to collect money that was based on a credible belief that handler thin air could be on the hook for that for that money  and that suffices under the third element to defeat the claim for tortious interference the last thing i'd like to point out the court decided that there was no evidence of causation and i think that the causation element is also critical here and mr abbas has allege without support that the contact caused his terminations and and i think what's clear from the face of the e mail and from the subsequent events is that you know to the extent that handler  of reasonable relationship and in the cursed case the court said that if statements create pressure quote merely as a result of their persuasive effect on third parties who in the end independently decided not to enter continue various subsequent agreements that it is not proximate cause ation in that situation so if the underlying factual situation is what causes the ultimate consequence then informing there's another appeal that's currently pending there's a case coming in the northern district of illinois there was a case dismissed from the new york supreme court's i think as the court is well aware that he's been sanctioned there is an injunction against him there's been a field ward he is not deterred and and so to the extent that this court has any equitable authority to help terminate this litigation we would ask that you exercise it  the appeal on the sanctions are you going to pay the seventy five thousand dollars well first of all your honor with respect to the seventy five thousand dollars already inform the second circuit that you have seventy five thousand dollars and that was excessive and it was overbuilding overstaffed so i'm i won't answer that until i know what happens in that case you're on i can't answer that and if you don't have it you not going to pay it whether is overbuilding right you're right well i'll just wait and see what the court says your honor because i asked for them to review the issue that sanctions is for the purpose of deterrence work and it gets reduced to forty five thousand you're not going to pay that either you know well we could you know have well i don't have it that's true and also and also and also judge sullivan not reduce one hour from all the hours that they submitted i didn't get it i didn't get a hearing i didn't get the unredacted statements and he didn't reduce a single hour from all the hours that they submitted but will the time that they work yes your honor