[00:00:02] Speaker 00:
Case number 19-779, Melissa Stanley, individually and as representative of a class of participants and beneficiaries on behalf of the George Washington University retirement plan for faculty and staff and the George Washington University supplemental retirement plan appellant versus George Washington University at L. Mr. Schwartz for the appellant, Mr. Netter for the appellees.

[00:00:27] Speaker 00:
Good morning.

[00:00:29] Speaker 02:
Good morning, Judge Rogers.

[00:00:31] Speaker 02:
Good morning, members of the court.

[00:00:33] Speaker 02:
May it please the court, my name is Steve Schwartz.

[00:00:35] Speaker 02:
I represent Melissa Stanley, the plaintiff.

[00:00:37] Speaker 02:
I would like to reserve three minutes for rebuttal.

[00:00:41] Speaker 02:
The district court's decision was incorrect because it failed to properly apply the well-established standards of

[00:00:48] Speaker 02:
for contract construction failed to appreciate the limits of Rule 12 analysis.

[00:00:53] Speaker 02:
And it failed to appreciate the real legal holdings and the key factual distinctions on the key cases, the Bachman case and the Grieger case, which support my position, and the cases that the court relied on, the Powell case, SunTrust, and the Stargell case.

[00:01:13] Speaker 02:
And I think the district court fell into the trap of failing to ask itself two fundamental questions which refrained its analysis.

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The first question the court should have asked itself is, what is the nexus between the claims that we have brought in the case, the specific claims, and the vested benefits that are part of the carve-out of the release?

[00:01:36] Speaker 02:
And it turns out the nexus between those two is so close it's like they were bonded by gorilla glue.

[00:01:41] Speaker 02:
The claims we brought in this case were that the trustees paid excessive fees needlessly for record keeping services and for index funds.

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And as a result of that, every dollar of excessive fees that the trustees paid or the plan paid was $1 less in the approved benefits account of Ms.

[00:02:01] Speaker 02:
Stanley and the other plan participants.

[00:02:04] Speaker 04:
Which is just to say that the claims you brought were for breach of fiduciary duties.

[00:02:10] Speaker 02:
No, it's not the same.

[00:02:12] Speaker 02:
I would disagree respectfully because there are many claims for breach of fiduciary duty that don't have that very close nexus.

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And so there could be a breach of fiduciary duty.

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For example, Ms.

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Stanley had brought a sex discrimination claim.

[00:02:27] Speaker 02:
That was what the original release was about.

[00:02:29] Speaker 04:
If there's a breach of fiduciary duty because trustee... Breach of fiduciary duty claim involving asset management.

[00:02:36] Speaker 02:
Well, this is why I think there's a big distinction between

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Bachman and Brieger on the one hand and Howe, SunTrust and StarGel on the other hand.

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The nexus to our case is a direct dollar for dollar nexus.

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In StarGel, in Howe, SunTrust, the claim was the trustees gave the plant participants, the Motorola and SunTrust employees the choice

[00:02:58] Speaker 02:
of investing in either Motorola or SunTrust stock.

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So it was a diversification claim and a claim that there should have been a disclosure that Motorola stock was going to tank because they had entered into some bad transaction.

[00:03:10] Speaker 02:
The nexus between those claims and the amount of money in the benefits accounts of those plaintiffs was very attenuated.

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The claims here are tightly, you know, dollar for dollar.

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And that's why in Bachman where the same exact claim was brought, the court reached a different result.

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Not because there was different law going around, there were different analysis, but the nexus was very close.

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The other thing that's very important is the claim is that the plan trustees didn't perform as well as they should have in whatever management, investment decisions and the like.

[00:03:48] Speaker 04:
And as a result, there was less money in the plan for the beneficiaries.

[00:03:53] Speaker 02:
If you look at that at the 10,000 foot level, that's one way to describe it.

[00:03:57] Speaker 02:
But I think there's a difference between a dollar for dollar nexus where you literally paid money for the retail version of an index fund when a jumbo multi-billion dollar plan like GW could have just simply gotten the institutional, the same exact index fund run by the same people at Vanguard,

[00:04:17] Speaker 02:
but the costs are lower because you're a bigger investor.

[00:04:19] Speaker 02:
That is a very tight nexus.

[00:04:21] Speaker 02:
The claims which were general breach of fiduciary duties and star gel and SunTrust and how very different.

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I also point out in all of those cases, those cases were decided on summary judgment where the court actually looked at evidence that was presented to the court to help it answer the question would the plaintiff have reasonably understood

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the contract, the release, to have released these types of claims.

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So there's an additional distinction of those cases which a district court relied on and nowhere does a district court even recognize that those cases were summary judgment cases and instead the district court here made its decision on a Rule 12 motion to dismiss.

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And that kind of brings up the second question I think that the court should have asked itself which is if the GW lawyers who drafted this language really intended

[00:05:11] Speaker 02:
to permit individual A1 denial of benefits claims, but to prohibit A2 or A3 fiduciary claims brought on half of the plan.

[00:05:22] Speaker 02:
Why did these lawyers write the release the way they did?

[00:05:26] Speaker 02:
Unless they're the worst lawyers in the world, and I don't think that's the case.

[00:05:29] Speaker 01:
Why?

[00:05:31] Speaker 01:
That's only if you think it's ambiguous.

[00:05:33] Speaker 01:
It excludes claims for vested benefits under employee benefit plans.

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A1 applies to recover benefits due to him under the terms of his plan.

[00:05:44] Speaker 01:
It seemed like a pretty close match.

[00:05:46] Speaker 01:
That's the one thing that you're allowed to sue under under this release.

[00:05:52] Speaker 01:
It doesn't seem very hard or ambiguous or bad lawyering.

[00:05:57] Speaker 02:
Well, first of all, virtually the same language was in Bachman and the court went the other way.

[00:06:02] Speaker 01:
Well, that's fine for that court.

[00:06:04] Speaker 01:
It's not enough to say that another court went another way.

[00:06:07] Speaker 01:
You have to tell me why

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That language is in a pretty good match up for the exclusion that GW is claiming here.

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It's not a good match up because first of all, it did not include ERISA in the specific list of statutes.

[00:06:22] Speaker 01:
But it said all, any federal, state, or local statute.

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Is ERISA a federal statute?

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Yes.

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And if the clause ended there, of course, I would lose.

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But in HAL, the reason why the HAL court had to figure out

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this distinction between A1 and A2 and A3 claims was there was a risk in the specific list of statutes included.

[00:06:45] Speaker 01:
It says including but not limited to.

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I don't know how much broader it could be than including any federal statute, including but not limited, and then this number of statutes which don't include ERISA, but it says it's not including.

[00:07:03] Speaker 01:
It's including not limited.

[00:07:05] Speaker 02:
Judge Garland, the carve out for vested benefits

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necessarily means not all of ERISA is excluded.

[00:07:12] Speaker 01:
That's right.

[00:07:14] Speaker 01:
That's the point of a carve out.

[00:07:15] Speaker 01:
And the carve out explains which part isn't and the match to A1B is pretty close.

[00:07:24] Speaker 02:
No, I don't believe it's close because first of all, obviously not all of ERISA is excluded.

[00:07:28] Speaker 02:
That's why the vested benefits are part of the carve out.

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And the only interpretations we have vested benefits because that's not a defined term under ERISA.

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accrued benefits is the defined term.

[00:07:41] Speaker 02:
The only definitions we have are forced court of appeals decisions that the drafters of this language knew about when they drafted it two years ago that said claims for vested benefits include claims for breach of fiduciary duty.

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That impact the amount of benefits that you have.

[00:07:57] Speaker 02:
That's the Brieger case.

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And so given that the definition of vested benefits was out there by four courts of appeals, it would not have been reasonable for Melissa Stanley to have known

[00:08:08] Speaker 02:
that claims that were being excluded were every single breach of fiduciary duty claim.

[00:08:13] Speaker 04:
Claims for vested benefits under the plan.

[00:08:17] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:08:17] Speaker 04:
And wouldn't any competent lawyer with even a passing familiarity of ERISA understand that the basic statutory architecture is there are claims for benefits which are A1B claims and there are

[00:08:36] Speaker 04:
fiduciary duty claims which are purely statutory.

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It's just a basic divide in the statute.

[00:08:44] Speaker 02:
I respectfully disagree.

[00:08:45] Speaker 02:
The Supreme Court and all the courts have held that the same facts can support a claim for the denial of benefits both under A1 and A2.

[00:08:56] Speaker 04:
Sure, but the claims are different, right?

[00:09:01] Speaker 02:
Well, they're sometimes different, they're sometimes not.

[00:09:05] Speaker 02:
the claim ERISA drafts itself as a term of every single pension plan.

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So no matter what the pension plan says, ERISA is part of the term.

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The district court here did not have the plan document, has no clue what is in that plan document.

[00:09:25] Speaker 02:
And in fact, if we ever got to discovery, we would show that the plan document actually incorporates a prudent man standard that the trustees have to comply themselves with.

[00:09:35] Speaker 02:
And if I were drafting this language, if any competent lawyer were drafting this language and wanted to exclude A2, A3 claims brought on behalf of the plan, they would have had those words, the four words that were only excluding claims in the carve-out that are on Ms.

[00:09:50] Speaker 02:
Stanley's own behalf.

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There was no distinction between claims made on behalf of the plan and claims made on Ms.

[00:09:58] Speaker 02:
Stanley's own behalf.

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and the Supreme Court has held they can have a claim for benefits even if it only affects you as an individual in terms of the amount of benefits, even under breach of fiduciary duty under A1B.

[00:10:09] Speaker 01:
That's a question.

[00:10:10] Speaker 01:
A1B claims can't be released by private agreement, right?

[00:10:15] Speaker 01:
They can't be forfeited.

[00:10:16] Speaker 02:
That's correct.

[00:10:17] Speaker 01:
But A2 and A3 claims can be forfeited.

[00:10:21] Speaker 02:
They can be forfeited in the context of a specific dispute because there's a rule that you've got to be able to settle cases.

[00:10:28] Speaker 02:
But those kinds of waivers of claims are narrowly construed.

[00:10:32] Speaker 02:
That's the Brieger case.

[00:10:33] Speaker 01:
That's fine.

[00:10:34] Speaker 01:
But so the very last line of the release that lists the exclusions says claims for vested benefits, underemployed benefit plans, and any other claim which cannot be released by private agreement as a matter of law.

[00:10:51] Speaker 01:
Isn't that another indication that the claims for vested benefits is one of the kinds that cannot be released by private agreement and therefore it's an A1B claim?

[00:11:02] Speaker 02:
No, I disagree with that too respectfully because the concept of settling breach of fiduciary duty claims is you have an active dispute and you have to have a resolution otherwise you're forced to go to trial to the end of the world.

[00:11:18] Speaker 02:
There was no active dispute at that time that Ms.

[00:11:21] Speaker 02:
Stanley had regarding these expenses because she had no clue about it at that time.

[00:11:26] Speaker 02:
So I disagree that that second part of the sentence that you read would somehow limit the broad use of the word vested benefits that was used in the release.

[00:11:40] Speaker 02:
I see my time is up, so thank you.

[00:11:57] Speaker 03:
Good morning, your honors, and peace to court.

[00:12:00] Speaker 03:
Brian Netter for the George Washington University and Associated Defendants.

[00:12:05] Speaker 03:
To pick up on Judge Garland's point, plaintiff Melissa Stanley agreed to release her claims against GW to the fullest extent permitted by law.

[00:12:15] Speaker 03:
The exceptions appear in a sentence that indicates that the only things accepted from this release are those claims that cannot be released by private agreement as a matter of law.

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Judge Bates correctly interpreted this release to determine that the claims brought in this lawsuit are not the sort of non-forfeitable claims that cannot be released, and as such, Ms.

[00:12:38] Speaker 03:
Stanley cannot proceed with this lawsuit.

[00:12:42] Speaker 03:
Now, my adversary focused much of his argument here on the question of whether this is a claim for vested benefits, but that's not an issue that Judge Bates found needed to be reached

[00:12:52] Speaker 03:
in order to resolve this case.

[00:12:54] Speaker 03:
We think that, like Judge Bates, the easiest way to resolve this case is through a two-step approach.

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First, ERISA claims are subject to the general release in the first instance because ERISA is a federal statute.

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And second, the claims for breach of fiduciary duty are not subject to the carve-out because they are not claims under employee benefit plans.

[00:13:21] Speaker 03:
And therefore, they've been released and that can be the end of the case.

[00:13:25] Speaker 03:
Now, in the reply brief, Ms.

[00:13:28] Speaker 03:
Stanley basically concedes the case in our view by acknowledging that if the exclusion covered, quote, claims under plan documents for vested benefits, then she would be out of luck.

[00:13:40] Speaker 03:
That parsing of a distinction between claims under the plan and claims under the plan document, it doesn't make any sense because under ERISA,

[00:13:49] Speaker 03:
the plan and the plan document are one and the same.

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When ERISA provides that certain restrictions apply to the phrasing of the plan's written instrument, it refers to what must be in ERISA's plan.

[00:14:08] Speaker 04:
What do you do with your opponent's argument that

[00:14:12] Speaker 04:
The plan must by operation of law incorporate ERISA and so you could think of the obligation to comply with fiduciary standards as part of the plan.

[00:14:27] Speaker 03:
Well, I think Your Honor that this release has to be read in full.

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And given how many times this release emphasizes that any and all claims are being released of any nature whatsoever to the fullest extent permitted by law,

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The most appropriate distinction, the most important question to ask is, is this a claim that can be released or is it a claim that cannot be released?

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And there's no authority for what I believe our adversary to be suggesting, that you could only settle breach of fiduciary duty claims once they've been filed.

[00:14:57] Speaker 03:
That's not something that is supported by the case law.

[00:14:59] Speaker 03:
To the contrary, it's true that GW could not have used this separation agreement

[00:15:07] Speaker 03:
to seize Ms.

[00:15:09] Speaker 03:
Stanley's 401K plan account.

[00:15:11] Speaker 03:
That's what this provision is designed to protect for Ms.

[00:15:14] Speaker 03:
Stanley.

[00:15:14] Speaker 03:
She had a balance in her 401K.

[00:15:16] Speaker 03:
When she wants to withdraw that balance, the money is going to be there.

[00:15:20] Speaker 03:
Arisa says that her best of benefits, non-forfeitable, and that has to be protected in a release.

[00:15:27] Speaker 03:
But going beyond that and creating an additional exception for claims that can be settled, you know, there's no logical reason why a release would do that.

[00:15:35] Speaker 03:
And given the terms of the parties used in this language, and Ms.

[00:15:39] Speaker 03:
Stanley acknowledged in the release that she had consulted counsel, the only way to interpret this release is that if claims were forfeitable and breach of fiduciary duty claims are forfeitable, then they have been released.

[00:15:55] Speaker 03:
Now, to the point that Your Honor was just raising, there is one case that I think strongly supports our interpretation.

[00:16:02] Speaker 03:
This is a case from the late Judge Kravitz in Amara versus Cigna Court out of the District of Connecticut, a case that ultimately made it to the Supreme Court but on a totally unrelated issue.

[00:16:12] Speaker 03:
And that was a case in which Judge Kravitz found that Cigna had, that the release drafted by Cigna did not cover the plaintiff's claim.

[00:16:20] Speaker 03:
But the phrasing that he used, I think, is indicative of what's at issue here.

[00:16:23] Speaker 03:
Cigna drafted the release language and certainly could have limited the exception, the carve-out, such as the carve-out here, to claims for benefits under the plan only.

[00:16:32] Speaker 03:
and not under ERISA.

[00:16:34] Speaker 03:
That's what we have here.

[00:16:36] Speaker 03:
We have a carve-out that is limited to claims under the plan, but Ms.

[00:16:40] Speaker 03:
Stanley is not bringing claims under the plan.

[00:16:43] Speaker 03:
Now, there were some new arguments that don't appear in the briefs that I do want to address that my adversary brought up here on oral argument.

[00:16:49] Speaker 03:
The suggestion that there's some closer nexus between the participant plan accounts here than in the other cases, which mostly arise in the stock drop context.

[00:16:59] Speaker 03:
is just simply not true.

[00:17:00] Speaker 03:
I would draw the court's attention to Count 2 of the complaint, which makes allegations for performance losses.

[00:17:07] Speaker 03:
The earlier cases arose in the context of participants saying that a company should not have offered its own company's stock as an option on the 401K plan lineup.

[00:17:17] Speaker 03:
And the allegation was, if you had not offered company stock, you would have given me a different option.

[00:17:23] Speaker 03:
My plan account would have performed better.

[00:17:25] Speaker 03:
It's the same kind of dollar for dollar relationship,

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And here, there are particular investment options that Ms.

[00:17:31] Speaker 03:
Stanley is claiming should not have been offered in the plan in Count 2.

[00:17:36] Speaker 03:
They're indistinguishable.

[00:17:37] Speaker 03:
In any event, all of these cases turn not on the nature of the underlying claims.

[00:17:42] Speaker 03:
They turn on the phrasing of the contracts.

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We've discussed in the brief why we believe that the district court decisions in the Seventh Circuit can't survive the Seventh Circuit's own decision in Howell versus Motorola.

[00:17:54] Speaker 03:
But it's probably worthwhile to focus on the fact that even if

[00:17:58] Speaker 03:
the case that I'll pronounce Beckman, were still good law.

[00:18:03] Speaker 03:
It has sufficiently different contract language than the language we have here.

[00:18:07] Speaker 03:
The exclusion in the Beckman case was for claims with respect to any benefits in which you have a vested interest.

[00:18:14] Speaker 03:
It wasn't for claims under the plan for those vested benefits.

[00:18:20] Speaker 03:
It seems on its face to be a broader release.

[00:18:24] Speaker 03:
On the other hand,

[00:18:26] Speaker 03:
the release in the Motorola case, which is the binding law in the Seventh Circuit, refers only to claims for benefits under the plan, not claims for vested benefits.

[00:18:38] Speaker 03:
So if the exception for claims for benefits under the plan did not support a breach of fiduciary lawsuit in the Motorola case, then necessarily if we were in the Seventh Circuit,

[00:18:51] Speaker 03:
then Ms.

[00:18:51] Speaker 03:
Stanley's claim wouldn't have survived there either.

[00:18:55] Speaker 03:
So we don't think that the two pre-Motorola cases that the plaintiffs have been able to identify really carry any water for them here.

[00:19:05] Speaker 03:
So as we've indicated, the cleanest way for this case to be resolved is to follow the roadmap that Judge Bates has articulated.

[00:19:12] Speaker 03:
Claims under ERISA are subject to the terms of general release.

[00:19:16] Speaker 03:
that claims for breach of fiduciary duty, because they are forfeitable, are not within this narrow exception to an otherwise broad release.

[00:19:24] Speaker 01:
If we had to go on to the vested issue, is opposing counsel correct that the vested benefit in the plan would include an amount that's not in your account, but you might get back later by challenging a fiduciary violation?

[00:19:44] Speaker 03:
He's not, Your Honor.

[00:19:46] Speaker 03:
We cite a number of examples in our brief of instances in which ERISA uses the term vested benefits in a matter that is entirely inconsistent with the plaintiff's approach here.

[00:19:57] Speaker 03:
One such example is that the plan fiduciaries are required to make certain disclosures of the sum of the participants' vested benefits.

[00:20:07] Speaker 03:
That makes sense if vested benefits means their account balances.

[00:20:10] Speaker 03:
It doesn't make any sense if it means the value of any future claim for breach of fiduciary duty that could in the future result in additional funds being added to their account balances that could subsequently be converted into benefits.

[00:20:22] Speaker 03:
It just doesn't make any sense.

[00:20:23] Speaker 03:
And that's another indication that vested benefits can't mean what the plaintiff suggests.

[00:20:28] Speaker 03:
I would also draw the court's attention to, let's see, 29 U.S.C.

[00:20:32] Speaker 03:
section 1002.25 in which Congress defined the term vested liabilities.

[00:20:38] Speaker 03:
Congress said the term vested liabilities

[00:20:40] Speaker 03:
means the present value of the immediate or deferred benefits available at normal retirement age for participants and their beneficiaries, which are non-forfeitable.

[00:20:49] Speaker 03:
Again, drawing the connection between vested benefits, availability under the plan, and non-forfeitability, which is all consistent with the party's contractual language.

[00:21:01] Speaker 03:
Releases, like other contracts, are supposed to be read as a whole in their entirety in order to effectuate the objective intent of the parties.

[00:21:09] Speaker 03:
Here, given the parties expressed intent to release claims to the fullest extent permitted by law, the only reasonable interpretation of the contractual language is the interpretation adopted by the district court.

[00:21:21] Speaker 03:
We would ask the court to affirm.

[00:21:22] Speaker 04:
District court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction under 12b1.

[00:21:28] Speaker 04:
You're fighting about the scope of a release, which in my view has nothing to do with understanding or mootness.

[00:21:34] Speaker 04:
Is there any reason why we can't just treat that as if it were a merits dismissal under Rule 12b6 and affirm it on that basis if we agree with you?

[00:21:44] Speaker 03:
Well, so Your Honor, we think there is case law to support the notion that if a plaintiff has released her claims that she lacks Article 3 standing.

[00:21:53] Speaker 04:
They win on the merits and therefore, the defendant wins on the merits and therefore the plaintiff lacked standing.

[00:21:59] Speaker 04:
I mean, that's not right.

[00:22:03] Speaker 04:
She first claimed an Article III injury.

[00:22:08] Speaker 03:
Right, Your Honor.

[00:22:09] Speaker 04:
So... She wants more money from the plan.

[00:22:11] Speaker 04:
She might not have a good claim if your interpretation of the release is right, but that doesn't mean she lacks Article III standing.

[00:22:20] Speaker 03:
Well, so a claim can be mooted, Your Honor, by a settlement, and that is effectively what's happening here.

[00:22:24] Speaker 01:
If a claim is pre-settled through a release... The question is whether there's a settlement.

[00:22:27] Speaker 01:
You can, likewise, if somebody sues on a contract, you can say,

[00:22:31] Speaker 01:
Well, they didn't actually have a contract so they have no standing.

[00:22:35] Speaker 01:
But first you have to determine whether they have a stand, they have a contract.

[00:22:39] Speaker 01:
So isn't that, that's really a merits question.

[00:22:41] Speaker 01:
I don't see why that merits question is any different than the release merits question.

[00:22:47] Speaker 03:
Well, Your Honor, I suppose it's a question of staging and not a question for GW's purposes so long as the case is dismissed and so long as the release is effectuated, whether that's characterized as a 12B1 or 12B6 ruling

[00:23:01] Speaker 03:
is not entirely important.

[00:23:03] Speaker 03:
At the district court phase, we cited authorities to the effect that the defendant can introduce a release as long as the plaintiff doesn't object to that introduction so that it can be resolved at the outset.

[00:23:14] Speaker 03:
Now, we do think that because a contract can be interpreted as a matter of law and because there's no dispute that this was a validly signed contract, that it was appropriate to treat it as a matter of standing

[00:23:29] Speaker 03:
because a plaintiff can't seek redress if she's already settled her claim.

[00:23:33] Speaker 03:
If the court were to determine that it instead wanted to treat that as a merits issue to be resolved at the outset, that again isn't something that would affect GW's interests.

[00:23:47] Speaker 03:
All right, thank you.

[00:23:50] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:23:55] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Your Honor, very quickly.

[00:23:57] Speaker 02:
In the room, and the district court cited this, the Supreme Court held that an individual plan participant may bring a breach of fiduciary duty claim on behalf of the plan under Section A2 to, quote, recover for fiduciary breaches that impaired the value of plan assets in her individual account.

[00:24:17] Speaker 02:
Similarly, in the Grieger case, the court

[00:24:25] Speaker 02:
basically made the same exact statement and that even at this stage on summary judgment, there's no basis to determine on the present record that any signatory would have understood the release that expressly accepted claims for vested benefits to bar a claim that the signatory received a lower level of vested benefits as a result of defendant's fiduciary breaches.

[00:24:50] Speaker 02:
Just reading quotes from the cases.

[00:24:52] Speaker 02:
That is why that a carve-out that preserves vested benefits claims, while maybe they can be brought as A1 claims depending on what the nature of the contract says, and we have no clue what the contract says because it's not on the record, can be brought as a breach of fiduciary duty claim on behalf of the plan.

[00:25:07] Speaker 02:
And nothing in this release makes it clear or even says that Ms.

[00:25:12] Speaker 02:
Stanley can only bring claims on her own behalf.

[00:25:16] Speaker 02:
And it would have been very easy for the drafters to add those four words if they wanted to be clear.

[00:25:21] Speaker 02:
And I certainly don't think the standard for a lawyer is that if you have cases that say this type of language is going to preserve a claim, you can just play Russian roulette and track that language and hope a court will interpret it the way maybe some other case might interpret it, even though the HAL case, for example, said that it was limited to the particular facts and particular circumstances of that case.

[00:25:41] Speaker 02:
There was no broad pronouncement of law in that case and it certainly never said

[00:25:45] Speaker 02:
I'm going to subsilento overrule Rieger and Beckman.

[00:25:51] Speaker 02:
Thank you very much.