may please the court my name is attorney right and i'm here on behalf of the appellant's this case is primarily about statutory interpretation the primary statute that issue is the civil asset for what is critical in this case is whether or not notice was required under section ninety three for judicial civil forfeiture proceeding it is our contention that the statute plainly sta that notice was required even though this was a civil forfeiture proceeding and where i direct a court to is the words in the statute which specifically say in no case more than sixty days after instance you know it's an instance involved within that universe if it means cases in case then you have some argument i'm not sure it's a good argument over winning an argument but we have some argument means no modifying a time based matter because the problem is the statute has two different times and it has a soon as possible and it also has a sixty day modify the sixty day time limit when you consider that as an instance an instance doesn't i'm not a time would be not later that or some type of word that talks about time instance would refer to the circumstances whether it is a nontraditional for which you're perceiving or if it's a traditional four for pure proceeding but more to the point  your honor what you pointed to is that there are two plausible interpretations and under this court's precedent in the ritchie case it's said that judicial forfeiture statute must be construed against the government so the mere fact that there are it would require the court to construe to consider the statute against the government because forfeiture is disfavored in our judicial system but be that as it may there are other instances in the actual statute where when there modifying time they specifically a different phrase and in those instances they talk about not later than in this case they are not using the phrase not later than more your honor without giving the word case the specific effect that we are giving honor we also cited to the one pair case and i would like to point out that indicts in that case the statute was very very similar to this statute in that it had a comma and the conjunction were and and the court specifically looked at the command structure of the statute and said we have to interpret this clause as being statutorily independent and it is i think that that case and if you look at the statute it was a bankruptcy statute i almost identical to the statute that we have in this case more but we have the legislative history of the statute which i think informs a belief that this type of  proceeding needs some kind of notice and we have legislative why why would there need to be notice in the judicial forfeiture contacts because there before the owner of the property can lose title obviously they're going to get notice because the government has to actually file a legal action to obtain your order i think the answer to that is that when a person's property is taken they have to be given notice so they can file a return of property the you probably figure that out pretty quickly right and then you have the remedies available under forty one g to get your property back if the government doesn't have any basis for holding on to it the concern in the administrative forfeiture context with not getting notice is that if a certain amount of time runs you will lose title and i can understand why congress would have been concerned in that context i'm asking you in the judicial forfeiture context where there's no risk that title be lost why would we care about the giving a formal notice within a set period of well i think it depends on what would be the context of the actual notice given if it tells you who is the person who is the agency that's holding the property what are the reasons for holding the property then you could properly challenge it as the person whose property has been seized and i think that is what the governor that that is what the statute is implying it's you give them notice and it should be sufficient notice to give them a basis that they can actually challenge it if it's being held in a different district how would you know if it's being held by an agency for instance if it's held by the f b i or if it's held by the u s marshals how would you know who you go to file you presume go to the bank and say what happened to my hundred million dollars and they tell you well they got a warrant to seize it sorry and then you know while you are that would be the case if it was a bank what i was what he was selling at one other example where the government doesn't have to get any kind of has there's no judicial process on the front and they just go in and seize property that you would have no notice that they took it well if it was cash or if it was some kind of asset that was movable that they just came and took then you would have to be given notice and know where it is so that you could proper and i would assume we have gotten a warrant right and they would leave a return saying we came took and come find us if you want to write yes you are but i believe in this instance what is what is critical is that the sufficiency of the notice should be enough to give you an opportunity to challenge i don't think that sufficient information was given for the to or if you want to make a claim i see that mike i see there only have two minutes left but i would like to just address this and say sometimes i think that the c f r is indicate the type of notice that need to be given and in this case that type of notice was not be here they please the court i am assistant u s attorney stephen our walk for the government i don't think it's i don't think the statutory construction issue is really the issue here it's clear that the that this notice provision in ninety three one applies to non judicial forfeiture proceedings i think the question that the petitioners are asking is and certainly the question that they asked in the district court is why is it that the attorney  specifically in the district court why is it that claimants are afforded more due process any with respect to property that's worth less than five hundred thousand dollars than they are with property that's worth more than five hundred thousand dollars because one thing that th e civil asset forfeiture reform act of two thousand didn't change was the fact that administrators forfeiture proceedings which are governed entirely by regulation statute and are handled entirely by federal agencies without any judicial involvement are limited to property that's worth five hundred thousand dollars or less so the idea was that what congress was attempting to do here was saying look we don't want the government to be able to delay indefinitely sending out a notice of a ten thousand dollar airport  five or ten thousand or even a fifty thousand dollar carson's or were someone thriving down the road they get pulled over by a police officer those are situations where there is no judicial involvement at the front end and in those situations congress said we don't want the government to be able to wait forever until they decide unilaterally when they want to go forward there's no judicial involvement in that situation so we're going to set firm deadlines that they have to satisfy that's the sixty day deadline when they're going to commence administrative notice proceedings this the what we have here is  hundred ten million dollars in bank funds that seizure warrant was obtained for so there was judicial involvement from the very beginning they were advised the day of the seizure by government counsel that we took your money we here's a copy of the money ok i'm talking about the stuff you talked about the distinction i'm drawing is that in this case where you're taking money out of a bank account the government always has to get a warrant but i understand you said that some saying ok how is that the point i'm making is that where in many occasions and in fact it may be in the majority of cases where there are nine judicial forfeiture proceedings commenced there is not one most of those seizures are done without a warrant  happened during the course of an arrest or they happen maybe at the border someone's getting nothing airplane at an airport but that can't happen just the funds in the bank account that cannot happen the funds in a bank that's there has to be something with also some sort of physical contact with  the person would know that the thing is missing is how they get know this was in a bank you know bank account you know i mean i guess if i have a hundred million dollars i check it a lot more often than i but you know i don't usually go and check the bank to see you know is my money still there so you have to rely on these other things most of the seizures are not are not that high quite frankly and when they are i think that the more valuable the property is the more likely it is that that i or the agency usually the agents are going to reach out to the person from whom the property was taken or their council as we did here and notify them and get and give them notice but one of the important reasons is and here's where we really get into the distinction where this value makes a difference where we're property is worth less than five hundred thousand dollars and the government commences an administrative forfeiture proceeding und title eighteen and within the meaning of this section the claimant is is is actually barred from going to the court and asking for their money back until the administrative proceedings have run their course so say the money gets  can i'm sorry do they participate in the ministry of proceeding if they do they can and that's the reason why they cannot go to court because they have a legal remedy by participating in the administrative procedure to give notice of those they get notice within sixty days pursuant to this notice p days to file an administrative claim and that's filed with the agency once they file that claim the matter is referred to the u s attorney's office and the u s attorney's office has ninety days from the date the claim is received by the agency to file a civil forfeiture action and there are penalties if they don't file within that time period or they don't get more time in the court the claimant can't do anything at the front end to to rush that notice provision so in other words if their money is taken they can't go in a week later into the district court and say i want my money back because the answer that is it's going to be an administrative forfeiture proceedings you have a legal remedy you have to way they can file their claim right away but they still have to wait ninety days for it up to ninety days for the government to make a decision whether they're going to that's how that process works where property ten not go administratively which is the case here when you see one hundred ten million dollars there are not those restrictions those claimants have access to the courts immediately if they want they can go in right and with a motion for a return of property and ask the court to get involved and determine whether that property should be given back or whether the government should be compelled to file a complaint right away in that sense the petitioners are entitled to court to have judicial involvement at a much earlier stage than they are in this setting that that's dealt with here in ninety three eighty three where it's where it's an administrative proceeding so they have met many more due process rights and in fact venture they waited seven months to do it but they ultimately exercise those rights they did go into the district court file a motion for return of property and it was procedurally improper the way they did it but they got the rights that they were entitled to because judge wright treated it as a motion for return  property and when he determined it so so they got they got certainly got timely notice they had notice within a day on the first caesars and they had notice within eight days on the second seizure they certainly knew who to talk to because the government council that was responsible for the  actually spoke with their lawyers as soon as he confirmed who they were and there were numerous discussions as reflected government doesn't have to file a it's uses the money a good doesn't have to file a complaint or  thousand it didn't it it's not to fix things that people had identified as problems with the statutory straight scheme but there were certain things that it left alone because it said that they need to be fixed and one of those things was what we're talking about right here and that is this question of  lay when you have property it's valued at more than five hundred thousand dollars and in one thousand nine hundred eighty three the supreme court in the u s vs it thousand eight hundred fifty said here's a four pronk test that we're going to look at determin whether a delay has been reasonable this court in u s versus eight hundred seventy four thousand nine hundred thirty eight which is a one thousand nine hundred three case dealt with this very issue and said what are we going to look at when the petitioner said that there's been too long a delay this was seven years before kaffir so they weren't talking about section ninety three but what they were saying is these are these four factors we're going to look at we're going to look at the reason for the delay the length of the delay and congress decided when it passed kaffir a that is something we don't have to deal with we want to leave petitioners with the right to go into court right away and there's a test in place to be applied to determine whether the delays and reason to kill him ask you just one question know your you're over  rule forty one g return of property proceeding what's the scope of the issues that a property owner can raise there that versus what they'd be able to raise if you were forced to bring file the actual judicial for person i don't think there's any difference at all and in a real practical sense what happens is generally want to rule forty one g motion is filed the result of that is usually that the government will commence a judicial forfeiture case or will return the property  didn't happen here because the on the criminal investigation was ongoing and it continues to be ongoing and i do realize i'm over time just just one last point i wanted to make that the petitioners did ultimately submit something that they characterized as a as a as  a ministry of claim they wanted to trigger that ninety day filing deadline and in response to that in in in compliance with department of justice policy the government has since that time been obtaining we've explained to the district court that we don't think there is a real deadline but is very briefly i think if you listen to the government's position in this case it's kind of unbelievable it's saying that they can take money that's more than five hundred thousand dollars and not give any notice and that's ok and you have more rights without being given notice the bedrock principle of our constitutional system is notice and i think the reason why kaffir was instituted is to start the forfeiture proceedings because congress knows that taking people's a copy of it but that is not sufficient notice under the regulations just a copy of the seizure work when i pointed to in our brief twenty eight c f r section nine point four which talks about i know this but you you can easily that fact that the attorneys got a copy of certain attorneys with certain types of representations to get a copy of the warrant these are factual issues that couldn't be addressed on a motion to dismiss your honor and i think that was beyond the scope of the motion to dismiss that's why it would be improper because the attorneys that got it may not have been the appropriate tourney's for the representations of certain entities that were holding the m our system is people get notice you don't do things behind their back i'm just trying to figure out whether you know that's just sort of a catch phrase or whether you really meant home well we didn't know you know if you know this we have no clue and i think