attempt to earn the right to continue to pay on a contract we entered in this case at the occult level and i really start by telling a court what a case isn't i feel somewhat compelled to do that today i'm well aware of the fact that this court and many courts around the country have faced a number of mortgage cases in which people said show me the note i get a free house people have argued that the mirrors involvement meant that the deed of trust was invalidated  was unsecured this is in that case this is a case in which mr tokin seeks the right to continue to pay on a contract that was accepted and ratified by chase it's always and it arose pretty simply he paid from may of december of two thousand and nine on what is typically known as trial period payments under a modification he made those payments for seven months although they were required for three because chase did not respond they alternately sent a permanent modification he immediately signed it sent back awaited their acceptance and under the terms of that agreement they were to accept unless there were material changes he didn't hear from any good citizen responsible borrower he called and said i haven't heard from you and you didn't take my first payment at that point chase had a chance to say there's no deal you're mistaken we don't agree instead chase apologized accepted that payment and april's payment in that moment said we had a mess with washington mutual we got a lot of documents we apologize he said well why haven't i received a signed agreement from you and they said we don't do that anymore but please you have a deal it will get processed send your payments it didn't stop there he then sent the payments this was in march that this happens he sent the payment through december of two thousand and ten before chase called and said no you don't have a deal now to other create their payments they accepted the payment yes your honor every month until december two thousand and ten that's when they called and said there's no deal now interestingly he'd been paying ninety seven in two thousand and nine the new agreement asked him to pay nine fifty five nine fifty eight he paid that for all those months and so chase's position is well it said it had to be signed by all sorts not a deal but of course the law does not recognize or somehow limit the possibility of ratification or acceptance in this case keep both had an oral promise that this was a deal an assurance that the reason he hadn't received a signed agreement was because of a change in position by the defendant he then acted in reliance upon that promise performed under the new are a deal and they accepted those payments for seven months i said in my brief and i didn't mean to be hyperbolic that the idea that this does not form a contract would make many first year law students cringe and i as my full time job as a professor now cringed a little too this is a contract and it's irrelevant that it's a mortgage it's irrelevant it's hamp chase makes a half hearted argument to say this doesn't fall within the statute of frauds that their attempt to say it had to be in writing is alive and well under missouri law in fact i believe it's alive and well under every state's law and it makes clear that partial performance is an exception to the statute of frauds as is detrimental reliance as  estoppel here my client believed something told to him by an executive director and then he didn't you know it wasn't like some call representative said yeah you got a deal he believed it he called he said let me send you another signed agreement faxed it to him while on the phone said let me fedex the payments right away the payment they previously rejected they then accepted and then took six more mr toki and only claim arose when they continued to attempt to foreclose the record as i think clear on this but i do want to express it he showed up in court multiple times at the courthouse steps and said please don't take my house i was paying and i want to keep paying pro se and it was only when this happened multiple times that he filed a claim in small claims court the best he knew how to do because he went asked a clerk and they said yes file something you can do then and he did it would say they made a federal case out of it affect i'm standing here is not not too much to say they did they removed it they attacked and they sought to dismiss these facts now i will readily admit that what mr pled is not what i had would have pleaded i'll say this it's different in two ways one i probably wouldn't have as many facts  two i would have used names for the legal labels but that does not a deficient complaint make this is a detailed factual complaint all the way down to dates names and phone numbers twice pled petitions that were detailed i didn't have to hunt for who did it when they did it what they said where they were when they said it how they said it why they said it what he did in response those state claims to put this in legal perspective either they made a contract which is what i believe happened or the executive director guy named freeman when he said you have a deal count on it and send us money he either lied or he negligent misrepresented the facts and that's the legal box chases it this is a deal or their own representative high ranking spoke with authority and said it's a deal when he could those make less so what contractual duties did he plead that were breached well he  that they refused to accept payments beginning in december of two thousand and ten and it's clear it i believe it's allegation let me tell you so i don't yes put t of the more definite statement in which he says payment for the property were stopped in january two thousand and eleven because of this update not by plaintiff but by chase and recognize these  somewhat vague inferences for the plaintiff and i have talked of my client chase told him you don't have a deal and at this court may be aware from all those mortgage cases one that you do learn is the minute they say you don't have a deal they won't take your payments or the other thing i would point out is that when you send  an amount that is one penny too low and this is in this is alleged at at twenty paragraph twenty if you sent an amount that is too low they reject or pain it is not a mortgage companies practice in this day and age to take payments that are partial they'll simply say it's insufficient so when my client paid one amount which they got he played it better than i did ninety five and then he paid nine fifty seven thirty two and they took that they were accepting new amount under a new agreement and there is no doubt that that's what happened in fact we have to take that as true because he said chase would never accept any payment less than the determined amount allegation twenty and certainly that is true in practice logical legal labels to give a detailed factual story i would ask this court to please consider those facts in light of the law to recognize they state a claim and i recognize that to hold otherwise is to hold a pro se litigant to a standard that the u s supreme court has rejected and eriksen be part of cited in our brief the supreme court made clear that we liberally construe pro se litigant claims and we give them every benefit of the doubt summarized just a bit that was in two thousand and seven that's with a close to current court and certainly with the justices who decided we have no reason to believe that's not still the law literally considering this claim the only harm will happen is that mr coaching gets to go fight to make payments on his home narrowly considering it will kick him out of his hou as that is i better not all of the things you i just want to before i cut you off these four causes of action that are raised are race for the first time on appeal never knew they were never raised in the district thompson filed a complaint that was essentially almost unintelligible the district court ordered mr thompson and after a motion for clarification to file a new response filed with the court then took as a response to the motion to dismiss and again did not state any legal theories and did not state his reason for the damages he sought the district court could have been just dismissed the case right there instead of my client brought a second motion to dismiss on the amended complaint discerning us best we could  five different causes of action none of these appellate disputes were improperly dismissed instead on appeal they waste three new causes of action that were never raised before the trial court at all and appellants themselves i mean excuse me upon him self say he has a duty to articulate some legal theory in response to a motion to dismiss especially when ordered to do so by the district court in my briefing i highlight two seventh  response to a motion to dismiss the plaintiff failed to address or rebut arguments raised mr campbell pled made me believe it was a pro se but when i looked went back and looked at the case i didn't find an indication it was pro se it did look like in this case she is represented by counsel and peele but if it was difficult for me to term others actually close they think that matters no because pro se litigants are held to the same standards as other litigants they have to be able to articulate a legal theory if they can't the defendant doesn't know what they're defending against if it's a tort claim if it's a contract claim well when we send this case back  he entered into he applied for and entered into a trial payment plan during two thousand and nine he made a legend and these are just based on his allegations as best we could discern them he made six or seven payments in two thousand and nine that was part of the step one process under half in january he received a step to process underhand that step two explicitly said it would not be binding unless it was signed by the bank he then skipped his january and february payments as this pleadings make out and you can find it in a palace of penance on six and seven alleging that a pilot made seven and eight months of trial payments prior to december two thousand and nine and then regular payments from march two thousand and ten to the end of the year in two thousand and ten in march dismiss he received a letter from chase stating we are unable to offer you a home affordable modification because you did not make all of the required trial period plan payments by the end of the trial period and you'll find that an a later after skipping two payments he received a letter from chase saying he wasn't qualified to get a modification after that based on these allegations which are very confused there's a back and forth about chase applying for trying to apply for a new modification a second modification ultimately mr thompson says and it's somewhat cryptic that in august two thousand and eleven chase told him he wouldn't be getting a modification  we did not perceive nor did the district court perceive a breach of contract claim what it looked like was mr touchett was saying that chase refused to enter into a contract with him but it's not our duty to nder the allegations  my client said that they didn't do that anymore which sort of strains credulity as the document explicitly says it's not binding until it's signed by both parties because that's that's what's alleged so moving on in terms of ratification mr touchin has missed fifty five payments he was already behind when he was making payments in starting in march of two thousand and ten my client was accepting far less than what it was owed and it's not ratification to accept money to the hopes of satisfying a preexisting mit's that in march two months after he sent in his application the bank told him he was not a crew for hamp modification after that he already owed money on his mortgage far more than what he was paying the bank if you choose ing to send in payments then the bank is certainly within its rights to accept them i also take issue with the characterization that mr campbell made that  thompson says in his complaint that the banks started refusing payments starting in january two thousand and eleven if you look carefully at that allegation he said appeared to me it says mr thompson no longer made payments because he wanted to see what the results of the modification would be so it wasn't that at some point the banks started refusing payments at least as as i read the allegations but again to the extent that the allegations are confusing again that bur see back to mr proves assurance that the agreement was accepted of course that's an allegation yes and what does that mean that i you know i don't know that should be determined after a draw or some sort of hearing you are i guess and i know my time's up i would submit if the holds very clearly as mick carrying the carry holds you have to tell me are you saying i contractor tort are you what's what's the legal basis of your therese and by the way you have to rebut what's in the motion to dismiss because if i'm a district court i find it possible and you say nothing you address nothing in it that i'm going to dismiss and i'm within my rights of doing that and i suppose from a practical standpoint that's the only way our district courts can function that they cannot act as pro bono couns standard of what we do here is what the supreme court said a document filed pro se is to be liberally construed and a pro se complaint however in artfully pleaded must be held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers all pleading shall be so construed as to do substantial justice ericson be part of the two thousand and seven this court in the circuit said that that excuse me in stone smith was on that panel very much the same thing and what they focus on is they say we will not supply additional facts or construct legal theories for plaintiff that assumes facts that have not been pleaded the standard here is facts my client pleaded facts in detail and the supreme court has said literally construe those to do justice there's a reason why we set aside defaults even a year later and it's because the court favors federal rules of civil procedure in every state doing things on the merits i'm not asking this court to enter an order that awards my client as home or even to find the modification is valid or to find that mr freeman lied i'm asking for the right for my client to return to court to prove his case either this was a modification is the court suggested or at least asked or when mr freeman said you got a deal keep sending us money he deprived my client of something important which was the right to make a decision about whether to send ten thousand more dollars in to a company that was going to say no eventually anyway let's point out here that they concede in their brief that apparently this modification was under review for nineteen months they say that they were taking two years to decide whether or not to modify the loan and in the interim apparently what they were doing was accepting varying thank you for the arguments on both sides the case is submitted and we will take it under consideration