[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
Okay, shall we call the last matter?

[00:00:04] Speaker 00:
Inre Atiyah, Andy Atiyah, Appellant in Pro Se, Tom R. Normandon, Council for Appellee, American Business Bank.

[00:00:33] Speaker 04:
Okay, why don't we take appearances first?

[00:00:39] Speaker 04:
Mr. Attia, you go ahead.

[00:00:41] Speaker 04:
Go ahead and make your appearance, okay.

[00:00:45] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:00:47] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:00:48] Speaker 04:
And?

[00:00:49] Speaker 01:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:00:50] Speaker 01:
My name is Tom Norman.

[00:00:51] Speaker 01:
I represent the Appellee American Business Bank.

[00:00:54] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:00:54] Speaker 04:
Well, Mr. Attia, you've got the appellant's role here, so you get to reserve some time for rebuttal if you'd like to.

[00:01:02] Speaker 05:
Yeah.

[00:01:06] Speaker 04:
Should we say five, and we'll let you know?

[00:01:08] Speaker 04:
Okay, come on up to the, come on up to the lectern.

[00:01:14] Speaker 05:
Morning.

[00:01:14] Speaker 04:
Morning.

[00:01:16] Speaker 05:
Thank you for having me here.

[00:01:17] Speaker 05:
Absolutely.

[00:01:19] Speaker 05:
What I wanted to do is upfront say I'm going to read from this.

[00:01:23] Speaker 05:
It's no disrespect.

[00:01:25] Speaker 05:
I just want to try and keep on track.

[00:01:27] Speaker 05:
Okay.

[00:01:28] Speaker 05:
So this appeal has to do with the Chapter 13 bankruptcy that was denied by the bankruptcy court of the central district.

[00:01:38] Speaker 05:
Let me start by saying this bankruptcy to me was not a strategy.

[00:01:43] Speaker 05:
It was a necessity, and I'll explain that in a second.

[00:01:46] Speaker 05:
My wife and I had lost our only source of income after our small business, RLC, was the victim of unlawful actions up to including judicial eviction.

[00:01:59] Speaker 05:
A jury later unanimously found for us in fraud and breach of contract

[00:02:06] Speaker 05:
And awarded us actually a substantial damages, but the judgment remains unpaid because we're pro se and we don't know our way around as well.

[00:02:17] Speaker 05:
But they left us without resources.

[00:02:20] Speaker 05:
And when I appear in pro se, it's not to say I want to displace any attorneys.

[00:02:30] Speaker 05:
I know pro se litigants are seen with, you know,

[00:02:35] Speaker 05:
Maybe, well, I'm doing it out of necessity.

[00:02:40] Speaker 05:
I'm not doing it for any other reason.

[00:02:42] Speaker 05:
Anyway, so we're in a desperate spot earlier this year.

[00:02:50] Speaker 05:
And we decided to declare bankruptcy, chapter 13, just to get a second, get things under control, catch my breath.

[00:03:04] Speaker 05:
And also, to protect our home, that was literally the only asset that we had left.

[00:03:12] Speaker 05:
And it's our home of 32 years.

[00:03:16] Speaker 05:
So I applied for Chapter 13, the appeal.

[00:03:20] Speaker 05:
This appeal challenges two things regarding that matter.

[00:03:26] Speaker 05:
First was the dismissal as a result of

[00:03:31] Speaker 05:
literally as a result of asking for an extension, which was denied by the court.

[00:03:38] Speaker 05:
But I believe the court applied the wrong standard of cause instead of excusable neglect.

[00:03:48] Speaker 04:
Can we pull that apart a little bit?

[00:03:49] Speaker 04:
I thought the first issue was, were you entitled to an extension?

[00:03:55] Speaker 04:
I thought the court did apply excusable neglect there.

[00:03:57] Speaker 04:
Do you think they didn't?

[00:03:59] Speaker 05:
I don't think they did because the court in fact remarked that what happened is I worked all the way till the end.

[00:04:09] Speaker 05:
I couldn't turn it in.

[00:04:10] Speaker 05:
I was taking it seriously.

[00:04:12] Speaker 05:
And I filed for an extension before midnight.

[00:04:15] Speaker 05:
I realized at 2 a.m.

[00:04:16] Speaker 05:
that I attached the wrong declaration.

[00:04:19] Speaker 05:
So I refiled it and it was a day late.

[00:04:23] Speaker 05:
So I think Judge Hull wrote that

[00:04:28] Speaker 05:
it was late and he was not going to accept it.

[00:04:32] Speaker 04:
What I thought he said, and you're going to correct me here if I'm wrong, is that he needed to find excusable neglect and he didn't find it.

[00:04:39] Speaker 04:
So if you think that was erroneous or not consistent with applicable law, go ahead and tell us why you think that's true.

[00:04:49] Speaker 05:
I don't think it was true, and there may be something else that went on, and maybe it's because he was looking for something.

[00:04:58] Speaker 05:
This was due on, I think, the first, the bank.

[00:05:05] Speaker 05:
filed their objection to an extension on the second and then on the fourth I tried to apply to their opposition but the judge had already ruled and in his ruling he quoted their

[00:05:31] Speaker 05:
He said that they did submit and that we were, he found me applying in back faith and he, I can't remember the other thing, but it was essentially, it seemed that it was,

[00:05:47] Speaker 05:
Yeah, maybe he was looking for something.

[00:05:50] Speaker 05:
I'm not sure that I got a chance to show neglect, but I did see that there was at least some sort of dependence on verifying, which is

[00:06:07] Speaker 05:
I feel is a problem for my due process.

[00:06:14] Speaker 05:
So, and then taking it from there, that same day I submitted a, they submitted, by the way, that objection, not as a creditor, they were not, I'm not sure that there's their creditor on the case yet.

[00:06:31] Speaker 05:
I know there's a process for them to go through to become a creditor.

[00:06:35] Speaker 05:
I think they're a party in interest, or interest party, but I'm not sure they're a creditor, yet they filed an objection, and they filed also a

[00:06:49] Speaker 05:
What is it?

[00:06:49] Speaker 05:
A motion to be excused from the mandatory stay with bankruptcy should that ever come up.

[00:06:59] Speaker 05:
I wrote a reply to that and explained all that.

[00:07:02] Speaker 05:
That reply somehow, and I'm not saying anyone did anything wrong, somehow disappeared from the record until yesterday.

[00:07:11] Speaker 05:
And I wrote a bench review for about that.

[00:07:13] Speaker 05:
Until yesterday, I got a call from the court room deputy

[00:07:19] Speaker 05:
saying, oh, we found it.

[00:07:21] Speaker 05:
We thought that you wanted to withdraw it.

[00:07:25] Speaker 05:
And so it was withdrawn.

[00:07:27] Speaker 05:
And now it's back on the record as of yesterday.

[00:07:30] Speaker 05:
So all the consideration that Judge Hull gave to my extension, and then there was a hearing I'll talk about in a second regarding the bankruptcy state, my

[00:07:48] Speaker 05:
position was never considered because that document didn't appear until yesterday.

[00:07:57] Speaker 05:
And I keep saying that this is American Business Bank, is the party in interest, and they are represented by Provost Normand and Dawn Rocha.

[00:08:12] Speaker 05:
The panel, Your Honors, might be familiar with that name.

[00:08:17] Speaker 05:
from a case that went on over the last year where it was in Enrique Fiedler.

[00:08:23] Speaker 05:
And they were admonished, actually they were sanctioned pretty heavily, and that was affirmed by the Bank of Seattle Board last year, and then also affirmed by the Ninth Circuit this year.

[00:08:41] Speaker 05:
And the reason I bring that up is

[00:08:44] Speaker 05:
There are things that happened since I applied for this appeal that as I read that case, it was deja vu in terms of how they worked the process.

[00:08:58] Speaker 04:
Well, all we can do is take account of what happened up to the time the judge made the decision you think it was a mistake.

[00:09:04] Speaker 04:
Okay, okay.

[00:09:05] Speaker 04:
I know you probably believe that passionately, but you know we're not going to make any other findings Okay, thank you appreciate it.

[00:09:12] Speaker 05:
Yeah, thanks well up until then

[00:09:18] Speaker 05:
When the judge made the first mistake, like I said, I believe he applied the wrong standard.

[00:09:24] Speaker 05:
But there was another mistake that was after that.

[00:09:27] Speaker 05:
He made a decision on their stay, an interim decision, without jurisdiction because by then the jurisdiction had moved to this panel.

[00:09:39] Speaker 02:
But that's because you had filed a notice of appeal?

[00:09:42] Speaker 05:
That's because I found my notice of appeal about two weeks before.

[00:09:45] Speaker 02:
But the decision that is the stay relief comes after the notice of appeal.

[00:09:52] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:09:53] Speaker 05:
I'm not sure how jurisdiction works.

[00:09:56] Speaker 02:
I thought that once the notice of appeal was filed, then the matter is... Well, it divests the trial court of jurisdiction over anything that's relevant to the appeal, but the stay relief is a separate issue from the question of whether you should be granted an excusable neglect for failing to having filed your plan on time.

[00:10:18] Speaker 05:
Yeah.

[00:10:20] Speaker 05:
Correct.

[00:10:21] Speaker 05:
That hearing went on without me being there.

[00:10:27] Speaker 02:
And you didn't file a notice of appeal after the entry of the order that granted stay relief?

[00:10:35] Speaker 05:
I filed a notice of appeal, and I amended it to include that.

[00:10:41] Speaker 03:
I don't know if that needs to be a different... You intend to have us consider the relief from stay as well, right?

[00:10:47] Speaker 03:
Yes.

[00:10:48] Speaker 03:
OK, I got you.

[00:10:50] Speaker 05:
And it's important because all that led to, this isn't your consideration, but I just wanted to let you know, led to the illegal sale of our home.

[00:11:02] Speaker 05:
And I only bring up the other case just because it's a similar type deja vu pattern.

[00:11:08] Speaker 05:
I'm not going to go into what they did after that, but they ended up selling our home.

[00:11:16] Speaker 05:
while it was in mandatory stay under AB 2424.

[00:11:22] Speaker 05:
They tried to sell it ten times in eight months, and when they weren't successful, they did it that way.

[00:11:31] Speaker 05:
But the stay on bankruptcy, excuse me, being excused from staying for bankruptcy filing, they made sure that I was not able

[00:11:46] Speaker 05:
stop them by filing for bankruptcy, or that was the end result, but it was obvious that was their intent.

[00:11:55] Speaker 05:
The second thing that they did was as soon as they got that order, and there was, they were seamlessly about my motivation, my character, my this and that, that I did not get to participate in.

[00:12:11] Speaker 05:
I mean, there were two hearings that happened

[00:12:15] Speaker 05:
that were material to us losing our home that I did not get to participate in, but they got full consideration.

[00:12:25] Speaker 04:
As a courtesy, you're within your four minutes, but I think Judge Gann wants to ask you a question that's more important.

[00:12:33] Speaker 02:
I just was concerned.

[00:12:34] Speaker 02:
I understood the second hearing that you didn't attend was the stay relief hearing.

[00:12:38] Speaker 02:
What was the first hearing you didn't attend?

[00:12:40] Speaker 05:
It wasn't really a hearing, I'm sorry.

[00:12:43] Speaker 05:
It was a discretionary decision by a judge on being two hours late and asking for an extension on... Following the plan.

[00:13:00] Speaker 05:
Yeah, and it was one item that was left and I wanted to do it properly.

[00:13:03] Speaker 05:
I just didn't want to... I could have just checked anything and there were...

[00:13:08] Speaker 02:
But even then he would have the discretion to decide whether to grant it, number one, and number two, it was on the last day that you could possibly have filed.

[00:13:17] Speaker 02:
Right.

[00:13:18] Speaker 05:
So what worries me is, as I mentioned, A, that there was, and maybe I'm getting the standard wrong in terms of whether he did try and apply excusable neglect, but that he quoted

[00:13:34] Speaker 05:
the banks, American business banks, objection in that

[00:13:46] Speaker 05:
decision to not grant the extension and then immediately thereafter dismissed the bankruptcy application with the word bad faith appearing in his decision.

[00:13:59] Speaker 05:
So I don't feel that that was, I was treated properly in terms of, you know, anyway, that's all.

[00:14:14] Speaker 04:
Okay, you've got about two minutes.

[00:14:15] Speaker 04:
Is this a good time to pause?

[00:14:17] Speaker 04:
Yeah.

[00:14:17] Speaker 04:
Okay, thank you very much.

[00:14:18] Speaker 04:
Thank you guys.

[00:14:20] Speaker 05:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:14:20] Speaker 01:
You're welcome.

[00:14:25] Speaker 01:
Good morning again.

[00:14:26] Speaker 01:
Tom Norman on behalf of American Business Bank.

[00:14:28] Speaker 01:
Good morning.

[00:14:29] Speaker 01:
Two things, Your Honor.

[00:14:31] Speaker 01:
Your honors, and that is that Mr. Ataya does have a license to practice law, did have a license to practice law, so his excuse for not being able to file a timely motion to extend the time to file the plan, et cetera, is not well taken.

[00:14:50] Speaker 01:
His license was taken away in 2020.

[00:14:57] Speaker 01:
That's number one.

[00:14:57] Speaker 01:
Number two, as set forth in our motion for relief from state, this was a standard loan, a small business bank loan, where the attires borrowed money to start their business.

[00:15:07] Speaker 01:
They had a problem with their landlord, not their lender, their landlord.

[00:15:10] Speaker 01:
The landlord apparently unlawfully evicted them.

[00:15:14] Speaker 01:
That was in 2020.

[00:15:16] Speaker 01:
We could have foreclosed as early as 2022.

[00:15:19] Speaker 01:
Did not.

[00:15:20] Speaker 01:
We went through a series of extensions.

[00:15:24] Speaker 01:
Refinance your property.

[00:15:26] Speaker 01:
Pay us off.

[00:15:27] Speaker 01:
All you have to do, you have plenty of equity even if you have to get a quote unquote hard money loan.

[00:15:32] Speaker 01:
You can go out and get it.

[00:15:34] Speaker 01:
You have plenty of equity.

[00:15:35] Speaker 01:
Nothing.

[00:15:36] Speaker 01:
They refused.

[00:15:38] Speaker 01:
We filed our notice of default, notice of sale.

[00:15:43] Speaker 01:
They have filed five actions, this being one, one in the US Court of Appeals now, two in Orange County Superior Court, and one in Los Angeles, all over the same thing, wrongful foreclosure.

[00:15:58] Speaker 01:
Their theory is that when the landlord evicted them wrongfully, our guarantee disappeared.

[00:16:06] Speaker 01:
the guarantee, and the deed of trust on the House disappeared.

[00:16:09] Speaker 01:
Every court has rejected it.

[00:16:11] Speaker 01:
Lending would come to a standstill if that premise was ever accepted in law.

[00:16:17] Speaker 01:
So we worked with them time and time again to no avail.

[00:16:21] Speaker 01:
Please, please refinance.

[00:16:24] Speaker 01:
Pay us off.

[00:16:25] Speaker 01:
Nothing.

[00:16:26] Speaker 01:
Nothing.

[00:16:27] Speaker 01:
Just nothing from them.

[00:16:29] Speaker 01:
So here we are.

[00:16:29] Speaker 01:
We think the court bent over backwards in working with them, giving them the first extension.

[00:16:36] Speaker 01:
The first extension time expired on March 31st.

[00:16:40] Speaker 01:
On April 1st, the day after the expiration, they filed a second one.

[00:16:47] Speaker 01:
Mr. Attire, the debtor, filed a second application for extension.

[00:16:54] Speaker 01:
And in it, it was almost verbatim what he had placed in the first time.

[00:16:59] Speaker 01:
I can't get an attorney.

[00:17:01] Speaker 01:
No real reason why, at a second extent, it would make any difference.

[00:17:07] Speaker 01:
The court considered it, denied it properly, we assert.

[00:17:10] Speaker 01:
And based on that, we submit, unless there's any questions.

[00:17:16] Speaker 04:
Judge Neiman?

[00:17:21] Speaker 04:
No.

[00:17:24] Speaker 04:
Okay Okay, if you like you got a minute 56 Okay, your honor.

[00:17:30] Speaker 05:
There was a lot more than what happened with the The rejections so I'd like to just respond since he brought it up and

[00:17:41] Speaker 05:
My grandma has a driver's license, and nobody forces her to use it.

[00:17:46] Speaker 05:
She uses it if she wants to.

[00:17:47] Speaker 05:
She doesn't use it.

[00:17:48] Speaker 05:
I'm in a completely different industry than legal practice, and I've not ever practiced as a lawyer.

[00:17:55] Speaker 05:
I keep my license.

[00:17:56] Speaker 05:
I'm a member of the state bar, but I'm not practiced in the dark arts as others may be.

[00:18:06] Speaker 05:
a couple of big mistakes.

[00:18:09] Speaker 05:
And again, that's why I brought up the last case that talked about frivolous claims, unchecked facts, and improper motivation, and actually a lot of different really strong language.

[00:18:28] Speaker 05:
Most of what was said is incorrect.

[00:18:31] Speaker 05:
We never had a contract with the American Business Bank.

[00:18:35] Speaker 05:
RLC had a contract it was a commercial contract with them they

[00:18:41] Speaker 05:
After the LC, the LC never defaulted.

[00:18:45] Speaker 05:
They were kicked out of the building, but the American Business Bank came back and said, look, we'll cut you a deal.

[00:18:56] Speaker 05:
You can sign this, what is it called, reaffirmation request, and then we'll stay any kind of eviction.

[00:19:07] Speaker 05:
We were scared.

[00:19:08] Speaker 05:
We lost everything at that point.

[00:19:10] Speaker 05:
We were not going to sleep in the car with our kids and our dogs.

[00:19:13] Speaker 05:
So we signed it under duress.

[00:19:17] Speaker 05:
We signed it under duress.

[00:19:18] Speaker 05:
And what it said was, you are now immediately responsible for the loan.

[00:19:27] Speaker 05:
And we're going to, it's a 10-year loan, but it's going to be due immediately.

[00:19:31] Speaker 05:
And we want you to please, I don't think they said please,

[00:19:36] Speaker 05:
If you don't pay us back, we're going to evict you.

[00:19:38] Speaker 05:
And in fact, before that, Mr. Gorman himself said, if you don't sign this tomorrow, we're going to evict you.

[00:19:46] Speaker 05:
I think in some circles that's called.

[00:19:48] Speaker 04:
We're kind of outside the record on that point.

[00:19:50] Speaker 04:
And you're about 20 seconds over your time, so unless you have a final point.

[00:19:55] Speaker 05:
My final point is, Your Honor, please stick with the grain of salt.

[00:20:02] Speaker 05:
that as soon as they sold our house, they ran, they made us out to be fictitious litigants, and the number one case they used is the first case we filed against them in Superior Court where they said,

[00:20:17] Speaker 05:
Either withdraw the case with prejudice or we're going to foreclose next week.

[00:20:22] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:20:22] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:20:23] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:20:23] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:20:24] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:20:25] Speaker 04:
All right.

[00:20:25] Speaker 04:
We'll take the matter under submission.

[00:20:27] Speaker 04:
We'll get you written decisions as soon as we can.

[00:20:29] Speaker 04:
And with that, I think our calendar is concluded and we're in recess.

[00:20:32] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:20:32] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:20:33] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:20:34] Speaker 00:
All rise.

[00:20:35] Speaker 00:
The session is now adjourned.