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Case number 18-7184, Connie Cornelia Rashard, Esquire Appellant versus Barbara J. Stevenson.

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Mr. McDowell for the amici securi, Ms.

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Rashard for the appellant.

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Good morning.

[00:00:18] Speaker 02:
Good morning.

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Ephraim McDowell as court-appointed amicus.

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There are two major questions in this case that I'd like to address in turn.

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The first question is whether Richard's service of the D.C.

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rent administrator was effective service under Rule 4E2C.

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The answer to that question is no.

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Richard's service of the rent administrator was not effective service because the rent administrator was not Stevenson's agent by appointment or by law.

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DC law does make the Director of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs an agent by law for non-resident landlords like Stevenson, but Richard never served that official.

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So the district court's holding on the first question is correct.

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The second question is whether the district court nonetheless erred in declining to grant Richard more time to complete service.

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An answer to that question is yes.

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And I'd like to first explain why the district court committed legal error and thus abused its discretion, which would justify at least vacater and remand.

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Can we go back to the first question?

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You're talking about the default rule here.

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Does the default rule even come into play here?

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Don't we have evidence in the record that there was a registered agent designated in the license?

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Your Honor, that wasn't actually in the district court record.

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That was raised for the first time on appeal by Stevenson.

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What we have in the record is the basic business license at page 58 of the appendix, which lists Stevenson herself as the registered agent.

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And that license was active at the time that these proceedings were ongoing.

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How do we know that?

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dates on the basic business license on page 58.

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Yeah, I understand that.

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The dates of coverage are the same on both certificates.

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Correct.

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And I guess I would have normally thought that the later supplanted the earlier, but if that's not the rule in the district?

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Well, it may be, Your Honor, but I guess my point was that she was, Richard was relying on what she had as the basic business license, which had been filed in a DC Secure

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But a license which may have been obsolete at that point at all the relevant dates.

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That's possible, yes.

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It may have been obsolete.

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No one has actually put in the license that we know was in effect on April 2018, right?

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Looks like these things were switched out every few months.

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It may be, and as I said... At least there's no evidence that even this one that Ms.

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Stevenson submitted was actually in effect in April 2018.

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There's nothing in the record on that.

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There's nothing in the record.

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The only thing in the record is the basic business license listing Stevenson herself.

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Is there anything authenticating?

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Are they self-authenticating or I just... The basic business licenses?

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The one that Stevenson attached to her brief.

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There's nothing authenticating except for the fact I believe that she swore that that was accurate.

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Is there anything authenticating in the earlier one?

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It seems to be attached to the complaint with a mass of other papers.

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That's correct.

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Yes, it was attached to the complaint.

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There's nothing authenticating it, but that's the only one that's actually in the record.

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And for purposes of construing factual allegations at this stage, I think what we recommend to the court is that, as in the personal jurisdiction context, you take the plaintiff's allegations as true.

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and you take the factual and evidentiary submissions that they make as true and ask whether there's a prima facie case.

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And here, we don't think that there was obviously adequate service on either Barry Triebach or the rent administrator.

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The point that I'm making as amicus is that a good cause extension was warranted under Rule 4M.

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A second extension.

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A second extension, correct.

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And Rule 4M, to kind of get to that,

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point, Rule 4M creates a mandatory extension scheme.

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So when there's good cause shown, the district court has no discretion.

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It has to give an extension.

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And that rule, in our view, applies equally to a second extension just as much as a first.

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What's your best case for that?

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That it applies equally, that the mandatory part of the extension applies equally

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to a second extension, because its text applies when service hasn't been made within 90 days, and now we're talking about service that hasn't been made within 150 days?

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Correct.

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So we have cases, I can point you to, we have three cases from courts of appeals in which the courts of appeals apply the same good cause test

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to a second extension as they would have applied to the first.

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And held that it was mandatory to grant it.

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They did not hold it.

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Well, they applied the same good cause test, and they did not ultimately find that the district court had abused its discretion.

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In this case, however, after the time it granted the first extension, didn't the district court say no further extensions?

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Yes.

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How should we think about that?

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What does that do to our analysis?

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I would actually say that that cuts in favor of an extension, because I would qualify that as a potential legal error.

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or at least a misunderstanding of the scope of the district court's discretion.

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Because at that time, that was a proactive or preemptive declaration by the district court.

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And at that time, there were no facts at that point about whether Rashard had made diligent efforts to try to effect service.

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So to proactively say, no further extensions will be granted, I think runs counter to Rule 4M's mandatory extension scheme.

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Because what the court should have said was,

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I will grant an extension if good cause is found because that's my obligation under Rule 4M.

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And just to turn back to give you the sites of those cases, so these again are cases that apply the same good cause test.

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And it's the Starkey case from the Fifth Circuit that we cite on page 33 of our brief.

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Then I have two other cases that we do not cite in the brief.

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A Nelson case from the Eleventh Circuit that's at 145F Appendix 303 and the McCray case from

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the third circuit, which is at 89F appendix at 361.

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Neither of those are, sorry?

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Neither of those are presidential cases.

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Neither of those are presidential cases.

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But just to quibble with points.

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None of them are from this court.

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None of them are from this court.

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So this is the first time to our knowledge that this court has encountered the question of whether a second good cause extension is mandatory.

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And just to quibble with the textual reading a little bit, I think that the best reading of the text, or at least the text, would be ambiguous as to whether a mandatory extension would be required.

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I take the point that it just references the 90 days.

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Putting the two things together, if the text requires a district court to grant a good cause extension when good cause is shown, and doesn't limit the number anywhere of how many extensions.

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Is your point that the district court simply didn't look at the good cause analysis here?

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That's certainly part of the point, yes.

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Can we look at the record as it exists and decide that's harmless error, that there's nothing in the record to show good cause?

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I mean, good cause can't be the inadvertence

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That's correct.

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So the way I would look at it is a two-step process.

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The district court committed a legal error by not applying the correct good cause analysis, never invoking the good cause standard, and treating intentional evasion of service as seemingly dispositive to good cause, when in fact no case or authority makes it so.

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The district court was, to be fair, the district court was just responding to the arguments presented.

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The district court was responding to the filing, to be sure, but the filing talked at great length about Richard's diligent efforts and Stevenson's intentional evasion of service.

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And Richard was wrong on the latter, according to the district court's fact finding.

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She cited good cause cases in the filing.

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She cited the text and quoted the text of Rule 4M.

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And I take it that the plaintiff has the burden of proof of establishing good cause?

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That's correct.

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Do they have the burden of proof of asking for more time?

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No, Your Honor, and the case I can point you to for that proposition is the Moore versus AID case, which we discussed in our brief.

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In that case, the plaintiff had not proactively requested or moved for an extension of time.

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Was that a second extension?

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No, that was not.

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So you're not aware of any case when someone's looking for a second extension where they don't have to ask?

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No, Your Honor.

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But again, I don't think that should ultimately make a difference, because Rule 4M creates a mandatory good cause extension scheme.

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The text, at least, is silent as to whether that same mandatory scheme applies to the second extension.

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But I think the purpose would suggest that it would, because Rule 4M uses the good cause standard as a mechanism for balancing fairness to the plaintiff against efficiency to the judicial system.

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So what should the district court have done here?

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It's ruled that you've got one extension, you're not going to get another extension.

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there, whether that's legally sufficient or not.

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That's what's before him.

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The last day of the extension period, the plaintiff comes and doesn't ask for another extension but makes an argument about evasion.

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What should the district court have done here?

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Right, so what the district court in our view should have done, and so just to be very clear, Rule 4M does not

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Anywhere in the text, it does not say the plaintiff must move for a request an extension of time.

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It says the plaintiff has the burden of showing good cause.

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And what Rashard did here was she made a filing with the court before the 60-day window expired.

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And in that filing, she showed good cause through her diligent efforts and potential intentional evasion, which are the two primary factors

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in our review of the case law that go toward the good cause analysis.

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So what the court should have done was ask whether she had shown good cause under the text of Rule 4M.

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Her primary argument is evasion, right?

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Evasion is a category of good cause, right?

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It's a factor that goes into the good cause analysis.

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So that's her argument.

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The district rejected that, right?

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It wasn't her only argument, though.

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She talks at great length about her diligent efforts to effect service.

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So, for instance, in the filing, she says, plaintiff has been diligently using all options to effect service.

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The diligent efforts of the plaintiff are evident herein.

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She cites diligence cases that are in the Rule 4M good cause context.

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So I think the fairest reading of this filing was as an argument that I've made diligent efforts.

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I have not been able to effectuate service through no fault of my own.

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That's exactly what the good cause analysis takes into account.

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And I think there may be a good reason why she didn't style this.

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But she were wrong as to the no fault because she was supposed to serve the director, not the rent administrator.

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What happens then?

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So the point I'd like to make about that, Your Honor, is in our view, a good faith error of that sort alone cannot establish good cause.

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But it also can erase good cause when the plaintiff has otherwise made diligent efforts to effect service through a legally available mode of service, which was here Rule 4E2A, personal service.

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And she had no way of knowing ex ante that personal service would be so difficult to complete.

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And the best case I have for that principle

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It's a district court case from this circuit.

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It's the Jewel case that we discussed on page 26 of our brief.

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And there, the plaintiff sought to serve the defendant through the defendant's agent and sought to serve the defendant at the defendant's registered business address.

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Service through the agent failed because of the plaintiff's own good faith error, just like Rashard here made a good faith error.

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But the court nonetheless found good cause because the plaintiff had diligently pursued service as a registrar.

[00:11:41] Speaker 01:
How is it a good faith error?

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Sorry?

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How is it a good faith error?

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She never cited anything that said you can, she cited like a 15-page outdated statute, but never cited anything.

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So I haven't seen no argument in your brief or yours as to why it was reasonable to believe that service on the rent administrator was appropriate.

[00:12:02] Speaker 02:
Well, I guess I'm not arguing that it was a legally meritorious reading of the statute.

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Even a reasonable, I'm just asking for, you have to be correct.

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You can still have reasonable readings of statutes that are not correct.

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It could potentially be an unreasonable reading, but my point is that she was

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Trying in good faith, meaning she thought that there could have been an agent.

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She looked at the basic business license.

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She saw that Stevenson had not appointed an agent.

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So she turned to the DC code.

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She obviously misconstrued the DC code and regulations.

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And because it arose in the context of landlord-tenant suit, she served the rent administrator.

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We're not defending that reading at all of the statute.

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All I'm saying is, I don't think, based on my read of Rule 4M.

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But we have cases that say, ah,

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inadvertence, negligence, you know, negligent reading of the law is not good cause.

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And so I'm trying to figure out how we know when, while other things were tried, outweigh what we've said about that.

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What I would say to you is if the plaintiff diligently pursues one legally available mode of service, which here was personal service, and I don't take your honors to be disputing the fact that she was highly diligent in that mode of service.

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And there was no way for her to know ex-ante that that mode of service would prove ineffective.

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So, for instance, I did.

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But ex-ante, she had 150 days here.

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So when one wasn't working, I would think part of diligence would be trying something else.

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Well, we have to look at the vantage point that she was in at the time she received her first extension.

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So prior to that time, she had sought to effect personal service on Stevenson at Stevenson's Maryland address via certified mail, which was a legally available mode of service in Maryland.

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When that didn't work, when basically the certified mail was not returned, she then sought an extension from the court.

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The court granted it.

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And at that time, she went well beyond certified mail servers in Maryland.

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She first sought waiver of process at the DC address on the assumption that Stevenson may have moved away from her Maryland address.

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Your language is well beyond, I mean, these are options that are available when one doesn't work, you go to another.

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That's not a sign of any

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heroic activity.

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That's just what the law provides.

[00:14:10] Speaker 04:
Absolutely, Your Honor.

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It's not heroic, but courts were teeming.

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And she made a mistake, right?

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She didn't take it, she didn't serve the government official that was supposed to be served.

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I'm not aware of any case.

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First of all, we're just talking about good cause.

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And good cause looks to whether the plaintiff has made diligent efforts and whether those efforts have been unsuccessful.

[00:14:33] Speaker 04:
No, that's more than that.

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As Judge Millett pointed out, if you're wrong,

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If you get the law wrong about who you're supposed to serve, that's not a good cause.

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That's correct.

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So what I'm saying is she tried two options.

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One option should have worked.

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It only didn't work because of, through no fault of her own, Stevenson happened to be persistently absent.

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It happens all the time.

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That happens all the time.

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That's why you have different options.

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Right.

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And that's why... We're talking about persistently absent here for 90 or 150 days.

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We're not even sure when she moved, so we're not talking like some

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couldn't be found for a longer period of time.

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Someone who just retired could very well be having that trip around the world they've been waiting for.

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That's possible, Your Honor.

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And that would be an extenuating or mitigating circumstance that would go toward a good cause extension.

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And we don't think that the court needs to find that the district court committed clear error in terms of intentional evasion.

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But if the defendant you're trying to serve tells the post office, for instance, to hold all mailings at the post office rather than deliver them to her, or she takes the trip around the world, or she moves from

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the address where she had lived for 20 years.

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Those are all mitigating or external factors that the plaintiff could not have known ex ante, and that's what courts look to do.

[00:15:44] Speaker 04:
Tell me why this isn't harmless error, if it's error at all.

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What happens if we disagree with you and affirm the district court?

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What does she do next?

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Is she out of court altogether?

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Any claims time barred?

[00:15:56] Speaker 02:
So two of her claims at this point would be time barred, I believe, on our reading of the DC code.

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The rest would not be.

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So she could refile the complaint.

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But she also had the right to take an appeal after a final judgment.

[00:16:09] Speaker 02:
And I think the reason potentially why she did that was because at that time she was left with significant confusion about how she was supposed to affect service.

[00:16:17] Speaker 04:
But now she knows.

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Now she knows.

[00:16:20] Speaker 04:
Well, the question is... You go to a different government official.

[00:16:23] Speaker 02:
Well, now Stevenson is no longer a nonresident.

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landlord because she's moved to DC and she's no longer a landlord.

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So she's going to have to go with personal service again.

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And personal service is proven time and again to be difficult to complete.

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And she had no way of knowing that, I guess her point is, she had no way of knowing that

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when she received her first extension.

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And the reason why she didn't style her filing with the court as a formal extension motion, I would have to think, is because the district court categorically stated that no further extensions would be granted.

[00:16:55] Speaker 01:
But she's an attorney, and attorneys all the time have to go, I recognize the court said this,

[00:17:03] Speaker 01:
I believe I have a right to make this request, and I'm doing it at a minimum to preserve the record.

[00:17:07] Speaker 02:
Correct.

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And she did file something with the court before her 60-day window expired, which met her burden, in my view, of showing good cause, which was her only burden under Rule 4M.

[00:17:18] Speaker 01:
Can we factor the statute of limitations issue

[00:17:22] Speaker 01:
into the good cause analysis since at the time the district court ruled there were no statute of limitations consequences.

[00:17:29] Speaker 02:
So the statute of limitations factor in our view never goes to good cause because the good cause focuses on the plaintiff's reasons for delay.

[00:17:36] Speaker 02:
The statute of limitations could potentially go to the permissive extension.

[00:17:39] Speaker 01:
It couldn't be good cause to give an extension because otherwise the claims will be defeated.

[00:17:44] Speaker 02:
That would be a factor for the permissive extension.

[00:17:46] Speaker 02:
So Rule 4M sets up a two-part test.

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If there's good cause, you have to grant an extension.

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If there's no good cause, you have the option of granting a permissive extension.

[00:17:54] Speaker 02:
And as to that, courts do take into account statute of limitations.

[00:18:00] Speaker 02:
But here, as you mentioned, at the time the district court heard the case, the statute of limitations had not expired.

[00:18:09] Speaker 01:
Pay any attention to it?

[00:18:10] Speaker 02:
I would not say that that was an abusive discretion on the district court.

[00:18:14] Speaker 01:
We just can't pay attention to that fact.

[00:18:15] Speaker 02:
I think you could factor it in.

[00:18:17] Speaker 02:
I mean, I don't think it would be part of the legal analysis in the abusive discretion review standard.

[00:18:23] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:18:34] Speaker 04:
Good morning.

[00:18:35] Speaker 00:
Good morning.

[00:18:36] Speaker 00:
I'm Connie Rayshard.

[00:18:38] Speaker 00:
and made pleased to court.

[00:18:41] Speaker 00:
I would like to present my representation as how I see the case.

[00:18:47] Speaker 00:
One of the questions that came up I was listening to very intently about how I somehow got it all wrong about the rent administrator.

[00:18:57] Speaker 00:
And actually on their website they had, I found a representation of the rent

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duties of the rent administrator, which were based upon statutory law.

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And one of the things it said was that the administrator could accept service of process.

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I electronically saved this information and somehow on my cell phone and I couldn't find it.

[00:19:26] Speaker 00:
And I have been fiercely going through hard copies at the library trying to figure out, find this document.

[00:19:35] Speaker 01:
You didn't provide anything like that to the district court?

[00:19:38] Speaker 00:
No, I did.

[00:19:38] Speaker 01:
Did you find it as part of this appeal?

[00:19:40] Speaker 01:
I'm sorry.

[00:19:41] Speaker 01:
Did you find that website as part of this appeal when you were in the district court?

[00:19:45] Speaker 00:
I found that website.

[00:19:47] Speaker 00:
That was the reason that I actually served the rent administrator was because I found this

[00:19:55] Speaker 00:
information about duties of the rent administrator.

[00:19:59] Speaker 01:
I thought when you told the district court you could serve the rent administrator, you cited a 15 page statute.

[00:20:06] Speaker 01:
Did you say anything to the district court about the website?

[00:20:10] Speaker 00:
No, because I could no longer find my citation.

[00:20:15] Speaker 00:
And I took some notes too, and blame it on Apple, because I put them in my notes section and I supposedly changed the web page to a PDF and

[00:20:25] Speaker 00:
saved it in my notes section, and somehow between something, it's just all gone.

[00:20:33] Speaker 00:
And well, at 70 plus years, I just don't remember everything the way I used to.

[00:20:41] Speaker 00:
Well, one of the reasons to add to what was said previously about, I still don't reason to kind of go through, if that's all right, to follow the tone of the argument.

[00:20:55] Speaker 00:
ask questions that have come before.

[00:20:58] Speaker 00:
And what I was about to say was that one of the reasons, initially I was going to go regular service and the clerk, intake clerk for the case said, oh, sent it by certified mail.

[00:21:15] Speaker 00:
And then I read the rule where, of course, the whole scheme of rule four

[00:21:23] Speaker 00:
is designed to save cost, to limit the use of the U.S.

[00:21:28] Speaker 00:
Marshals Service, and to try and get litigants to actually agree to service when they know there is a controversy.

[00:21:37] Speaker 00:
So that was my original intent, and that failed miserably as I have outlined.

[00:21:43] Speaker 00:
in my documents before this court and before the district court.

[00:21:50] Speaker 00:
Well one of the reasons why I didn't file a motion for an extension was because the judge had said no and in fact eventually he told me not to file anything else in the case and I could go ahead and appeal.

[00:22:06] Speaker 00:
So I thought that my efforts to do so would have been fruitless.

[00:22:10] Speaker 00:
So what I did was I categorized a lot of the information that I had regarding how I had approached service or process, and I put it as additional information attached to the documents.

[00:22:26] Speaker 00:
I apologize.

[00:22:27] Speaker 00:
I didn't make a mistake.

[00:22:32] Speaker 00:
But now here we are.

[00:22:34] Speaker 01:
If the district court had given you more time, what was your plan to do next?

[00:22:37] Speaker 01:
What was the next thing you were going to try?

[00:22:41] Speaker 00:
Well, actually it occurred to me at some point that maybe the DC Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, I had contacted them and they said they didn't have a Barbara Stevenson.

[00:23:02] Speaker 00:
So I was going to use different process servers.

[00:23:07] Speaker 00:
One of the process servers I used actually lived at the DC address.

[00:23:12] Speaker 00:
And to make it clear, I initially started in Maryland, but in September and subsequently I applied it to both Maryland and Virginia.

[00:23:23] Speaker 00:
I'm sorry, DC, because those were the only two addresses that I had.

[00:23:28] Speaker 00:
And Mrs. Stevenson must have gotten her other mail.

[00:23:32] Speaker 00:
I don't know why it was returned to me that she was supposed to pick it up.

[00:23:39] Speaker 00:
I can't believe she didn't get any mail.

[00:23:42] Speaker 00:
And I believe the situation now is can service be made?

[00:23:51] Speaker 00:
And Ms.

[00:23:52] Speaker 00:
Stevenson is in DC.

[00:23:56] Speaker 00:
I would apparently have to use more resources than cost.

[00:24:02] Speaker 00:
to try and locate her.

[00:24:03] Speaker 00:
She lives in a condominium, and access is limited.

[00:24:08] Speaker 00:
That was one of the reasons why I hired someone who lived in the building, and they didn't do a very good job.

[00:24:15] Speaker 00:
But the stat of your case law, Buhlen v. Stein, they all say, and they're from this particular court, the DC, I'm sorry, this is the DC Court of Appeals, and not this court.

[00:24:31] Speaker 00:
But they all referenced the fact that if service can be made that there is a preference to allow the plaintiff to go ahead and make their case.

[00:24:45] Speaker 00:
And I believe that after all that I've learned that mail doesn't work for me and that I might have to use more extensive process server services.

[00:25:01] Speaker 00:
They may have to stake out the place, but I believe that service can be made.

[00:25:06] Speaker 00:
And several of the cases that I cited in my brief, Barrett v. Embassy of the Republic of Zambia, that would have been the D.C.

[00:25:20] Speaker 00:
Circuit 2015.

[00:25:22] Speaker 00:
Here again,

[00:25:27] Speaker 00:
That court said that dismissal is not appropriate where there exists a reasonable prospect that service can be obtained.

[00:25:38] Speaker 00:
And I have other cases that are in my brief.

[00:25:42] Speaker 00:
Liskey v. Jones, this would have been a federal civil procedure decision, FRD.

[00:25:53] Speaker 00:
Here again, the operative word is cancer is now be made.

[00:25:58] Speaker 00:
And I know that I have to spend more money.

[00:26:03] Speaker 01:
He would have had to do that even if the district court gave you more time.

[00:26:06] Speaker 01:
I'm sorry?

[00:26:07] Speaker 01:
He would have had to spend more money even if the district court gave you more time.

[00:26:11] Speaker 00:
Yes, and I'm saying I know now that that's what I will have to do.

[00:26:15] Speaker 00:
I have to pay someone to actually stake the person out

[00:26:20] Speaker 00:
rather than just going trying to make the process.

[00:26:26] Speaker 00:
And I do believe I've made adequate showing that there was a problem in making service.

[00:26:35] Speaker 00:
that the district court erred by not giving me more time, that I was essentially told not to file any more motions.

[00:26:45] Speaker 00:
So all I could do was present the information and make it available.

[00:26:49] Speaker 00:
And the district court, without consulting me any further, made a ruling that the case was dismissed without prejudice.

[00:27:00] Speaker 00:
There were other issues that could arise, for example,

[00:27:07] Speaker 00:
whether or not we would be in the same jurisdiction.

[00:27:14] Speaker 00:
Currently I live with a relative in Maryland, but if I wanted to return to DC, then we would both be in the same jurisdiction and federal service jurisdiction would no longer be available on the issues presented.

[00:27:30] Speaker 01:
Do you still have cases in the DC court system?

[00:27:34] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:27:35] Speaker 00:
What is the status of that?

[00:27:37] Speaker 00:
What's that case about and what's the status of that?

[00:27:39] Speaker 00:
Well, in the DC court, I have an appeal currently pending regarding wrongful eviction.

[00:27:49] Speaker 01:
The same claim you're litigating here?

[00:27:52] Speaker 01:
I'm sorry?

[00:27:52] Speaker 01:
The same claim you raised in your complaint here?

[00:27:56] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:27:57] Speaker 00:
However, this is from the Landlord and Tenant Court.

[00:28:02] Speaker 00:
And it's a court of limited jurisdiction where only the landlord can bring an action.

[00:28:08] Speaker 00:
So any other action would have had to have been in a different court.

[00:28:14] Speaker 00:
Can you get damages in that action?

[00:28:17] Speaker 00:
I'm sorry, can you get damages in that action?

[00:28:20] Speaker 00:
To some extent, yes, I'm not clear, but it's limited.

[00:28:25] Speaker 00:
It would not cover the vast majority of the causes of action that I raised in my complaint.

[00:28:37] Speaker 04:
So I'm urging the court to... Mr. Sharpe, I see your time is up.

[00:28:40] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:28:44] Speaker 00:
Okay.

[00:28:44] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:28:45] Speaker 00:
I appreciate it.

[00:28:59] Speaker 04:
Mr. McDowell, would you like some time to rebut it?

[00:29:02] Speaker 04:
Yes.

[00:29:02] Speaker 04:
Okay, we'll give you a minute.

[00:29:03] Speaker 02:
Yeah, I just want to make two quick points.

[00:29:04] Speaker 02:
So the legal error here was that the district court found, expressly found diligent efforts were made.

[00:29:10] Speaker 02:
It said diligent efforts were made on page two of its opinion, but it treated intentional evasion of service as a dispositive factor.

[00:29:16] Speaker 02:
And that was the core legal error, because no case makes intentional evasion of service a dispositive factor as to good cause.

[00:29:23] Speaker 02:
Now, that brings us, I think that gets us to vacate and remand, and Judge Griffith raised a question, well, wouldn't this be harmless error?

[00:29:30] Speaker 02:
And my understanding of how that would work is, I believe this court should vacate and remand unless it would think that it would be an abusive discretion to grant her an extension of time in this case.

[00:29:40] Speaker 02:
So I think what the court should do, if it does believe that there was a legal error, is vacate and remand to see what the district court would do under the proper legal understanding, because it did not understand the proper legal standard by treating intentional evasion.

[00:29:53] Speaker 01:
The district court made that diligence finding before the supplemental ruling in our request on whether service on the rent administrator is proper.

[00:30:03] Speaker 01:
That's correct.

[00:30:05] Speaker 01:
I don't know how much weight we can put on that diligence finding now that there's been an examination of whether it was diligent to serve the rent administrator.

[00:30:13] Speaker 02:
Well, respectfully, Your Honor, in that remand, this report was not asked to reconsider any

[00:30:19] Speaker 02:
aspect of its original diligence findings.

[00:30:21] Speaker 02:
So I think we don't know what the district court would do on remand.

[00:30:24] Speaker 02:
And I think what we do know is that the district court was operating under a bit of a misunderstanding of the appropriate legal standard because it treated intentional evasion as dispositive.

[00:30:34] Speaker 02:
There are no further questions.

[00:30:35] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:30:36] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:30:38] Speaker 04:
Mr. McGill, you were appointed by the court to help us in this case, and we thank you very much for your assistance.

[00:30:44] Speaker 04:
The case is submitted.

[00:30:45] Speaker 04:
Thank you.