district court granted a rule twelve motion without allowing us the opportunity to amend claims to address any concerns that it had i would submit the first and foremost the court erred in granting the motion to begin with because we had indeed pled all the requisite elements to establish the claims that applied in the first of many complaint both judge king gave you the opportunity to a man and and no amendment no you a second order that provided that any amendment to be timely had to be filed by january second none was filed why isn't that a lawful order under rule sixteen and in order to amend further you need to show good cause while you're out of the circumstances that led to the stipulations an order from judge king amend had nothing to do with the substance of the allegations or the merit of the claims that may have been true in october but when you get around to december he said any stipulation or a motion to amend or to add a party shall be filed by january second and none was filed well but again are the circumstances here matter the reason why there was the discussion with judge king about amending the complaint was because of the negotiations going on between the city of santa monica modesty to medical and my client and whether or not monis you know was going to complete a transaction with my clients to get them out of the building and the impact of that the criminal charges that were brought by the city bore and all of that i understand that as to october but where's any indication in the record that that had anything to do with the judge's ruling in december his second letter not his first order it's all part of the same transaction it's all it's all part of the same circumstance of lead from the first or in the second or two the reason why there was a need for a second order is because the process of separating medical from all this took longer than anticipated we know of the believe that mana c the medical was going to sign a settlement agreement well before to actually have you come to us even now what it would help me to go back to the merits of the case but eventually i'd like to know what you would amend what you in just in some ballpark fashion what what amendments could help this well i don't think amendments are actually required drawn or i think that we actually have stated the requisite elements of the coin but if we were required to amend we could we could in the more fans but one thing i would like to know because nobody's quite tell me is what was the relationship between your client and the lion the person who own the building at the time i gather the ike some vaal part of notion of what it is my understanding your owners they did not sell the parking lot they sold the building and in order for them to earn it there was a purchase price agreed to for the entire building including the parking garage but because the parking garage did not work properly at the time of the sale that was held back so that we could try and get it to work and then there was an urn out which is where we got the penny going to tell you that your client owned the mechanisms but not built but had no interest in the land or in the my understanding is that we own the economic interests and i can't be any more specific than that your complaint is a little bit more specific you complained alleges that you had a contractual quote right to manage if we accept that allegation is true as we must and you had m m a see right to the city withdrawing the appeal during the license application if that was an improper move on their part why isn't your remedy a breach of contract action against m m a c for interfering with your right to manage if your position is the right to manage meant you had the exclusive right to seek construction license why is it that your remedy won't so to answer your question your honor you can't sue party to a contract for interference with its own contract so our contract will reach a contract you gave me the contractual right to manage and you did not allow me to manage by you withdrawing the notice of appeal that's a straight up breach of contract not an interference but there are two separate issues and whether or not a right exists for us to pursue against enemy c is independent of whether or not the city is liable for actions that frustrated our ability to be able to deliver what m m ac contracted for but it but it goes rises to the level of informing whether or not you have a real viable economic interest that is protected under the constitution or is this merely a contractual right well isn't that a relevant consideration on whether or not you have a characterization by apple e is that you need to have a real property right there needs to be a real property interest they don't explicitly states that but the way they argue the case is that they argue make it sound like that's the case and it's not the case law i believe it's perfectly coopt the property i mean and it seems extremely strange to me to think that there i mean to step back and from the from the technical question of whether this is a property interest  that the city would have to essentially afford to process to anybody who's economic interest is going to be affected by the way by whether or not it grants have a permit for example or a license with regard to the use of possibly not be the case given what the due process how implications of the city would be if it weren't limited to some property interest the city's due process obligation is to afford applicants or permits in this particular instance the right to due process they have acknowledged there's a need that they from the city after a my understanding of the city's position is it's the owner of their property who applies for the license not somebody else and that we don't have to deal with with you know the who needs a license is the person who owns the property well but that gets into this chicken and egg thing that relates to the question that judges don't want asked about the timing of our medical point what the city did in this instance as we've alleged and i believe i you contesting the second point that if all that hand happened in a city and just said sorry you're not the owner is a property and the owner of the property isn't appealing this and you don't have you're not the person that that needs a license or that we can and therefore you're not the person that we're going to provide due process for with regard to the license is that a problem i don't believe that that's the way you are the only complaint then is that somehow are made this situation happen well you know but to answer the point you're pretty right i don't think again that there needs to be a real property interest in the city is entitled to say that we can do whatever we want to manipulate the process just because you don't own this land but i would point but you have this problem in your complaint you don't allege a single instance of the city is acting differently than they acted in in your case by saying if the property owner doesn't want to pursue it we withdraw the appeal you cite no other instance you allege no other instance despite your class of one type claim which would call for that showing that there were others similarly situated built dealt with differently i don't find anything in your complaint where you are alleged someone else who was not an owner was allowed to appeal over the objection of the owner so the first point response that your honor is that we can easily amend to do so and i believe the law of the circuit is such that we should be afforded the opportunity the substance we have put the city on notice of our obligations but you have to show facts right under it battle you have to show facts it's not enough to make a conclusion restatement and you haven't shown that you similarly situated to someone who got a better better treatment at the hands of the city wall this is the it was one of the standards are that we stay plausible claims and so given the allegations that we've made in our complaint which tentatively have more support then you would tip we find in my experience in cases of this nature meet that standard we've got a military for sure isn't a to extraordinary proposition to say that this city did me wrong because they did not allow me to appeal when the owner of the property said it didn't want to appeal and your complaint cites no  intuitively obvious is no one else had a situation like this another words said you're not going to find a similar situation person well but it depends on your definition of what similar situated are you going to have a situation where this city conspire opportunity to appeal decision that it building inspector makes so yes you probably are not going to find this exact fact pattern which is why we're here but you can have other situations where like in the in the the prime health care  the real question is is is there another situation in which somebody violated a license and then ultimately was and was prosecuted for doing that and unable to seek the license because they weren't the ownership of the property and you'd have to have those are you have to find that circumstance and show that somebody else in that circumstance was allowed to  having access to the process so we need a situation where they have not done this there are other people who have been afforded the opportunity to disagree with the decision from a building inspector a city off even know they don't own the property  and the person who does own the property has isn't challenging it and and even if you wrap up the other circumstances  license for that so in response to that i would say number one i respectfully disagree that those if that exact fact patterns are required to be able to make our case we need to show that there was disparate treatment here in the way that we were denied access to the appellate process where other people wouldn't have been based on on animists i would also reiterate that ownership of the real property is not in my opinion a minor standing of the appropriate authorities a requisite element here because we have a contract interest and we have an economic interest in the op and say that i sold and that then you're flowing into the due process question but it's a matter of the equal protection question if the city's position is that ownership is a prerequisite then you would have to demonstrate that somebody who didn't own the property was allowed to proceed of his even though the person who did on the property when it wasn't was withdrawn the application of the promise of the hypothetical your honor is that we are strangers to the property when we're not we have a concrete interest in the operation of this  you filed a notice of appeal fourteen days after the district court's decision granting the motion to dismiss correct and at no time did you move to amend is that correct arguments of this case the opponents in this case are parking garage operators and one of the key facts that's actually alleged in the complaint in this part of the complaint is the fact that they had previously s and were granted a permit to operate the parking garage and it was granted to be fully automated that was all of the time they got that license they did on their property at the time they own the property was own correct in that it was sold after the sale the property at some point the garage did not operate as intended and without seeking any price i think we know all that if those are the actual went well but what's important here is and i think what the opponents tend to undermine is the nature of the serious which raised several counts under the labor code including count exposing employees to repeated violent violations that create a real and apparent houser to employees so the city has a very strong interest in enforcing the code especially as it pertains to the safety of its citizens and while the the opponents here attempt to minimize the nature of the criminal proceedings by calling it minor violations with the specter the due process and equal protection claims but before they even that gets reached there is the issue of hack hack to humphrey and we raise this in our papers we race is full of i know the district court below did not agree with us on that position but i think it's a position that of the underlying conviction is that these aren't no contest plea nolo pleas treated differently well your honor we cited at least seven cases in our brief seven of which are within the ninth circuit to which were published questions of counsel is doesn't there have to be some sort of legitimate claim of entitlement for there to be a due process protection can any economic interest be required  how the due process interest does trying to hack in order for there to be a due process for to interest the protective there are two steps that the court has to look at first one obviously what's what's the interesting protected here is that life liberty no of course not it it's a legit property and the point the opponents have not cited a single decision much less a binding decision on the circuit which is held that a third party contract that is not an employment contract creates a poverty interest but let's assume for even argument's sake that the contract was somehow sufficient for what this court has held in the adair adele he o'brian case which we cited on page twenty one of our answering brief is that for a property interest to be protected the house to be a legitimate claim of entitlement in that adele he case in that case was very similar case and actually in the sense that what was sought in that case was a license to carry a concealed in less you know for spac that you're entitled to that piece of property there is no property interest protected and that's where we go right into our case under the settlement of communal civil code which is part of the record the board has a number of different criteria that it can look at in terms of whether or not to grant a license to operate a parking facility and one of the factors that is specifically indicated in the municipal code is safety in other words if there are safety issues that is a proper basis for a city to deny a permit as in this case and in great detail as part of the record in this case the city explained why the permit in this case for the license was not being granted and that is actually now moved on to the ok well let me ask you question what should we do with the fact that when the miller entities filed a construction license application it wasn't rejected out of hand because they were the owner of the property that's a good question your honor and i think you know certainly the city could have flat out rejected the application on that basis but it didn't it provided specific reasons why it was not being granted perhaps the city just assumed that the parking operator had the the the good blessing by the building owner to pursue that license but for whatever reason the city went ahead and addressed it on its merits but obviously once the city found out that the building owner didn't have any interest in either the license being sought or the appeal that's when the line is there anything related to that believe under the code in existence at the time at issue in this case i'm not sure if that was spelled out in specifically but i think it would be implicit i mean i could give an and one of the tenants decides to tear down a wall and the city finds out about it and orders them hey stop turned on the wall it's creating some safety issues you're exposing wiring whatever it may be and let's say the tenant then applies to the city for a permit to be able to you know rebuild the building the space then presumably that was part of this property interest well i mean i think what you're talking about here is is there a property interest to operate a semi semi automated parking facility in an enclosed underground area which poses a safety risk to individuals which is in violation that you're now spinning on her and you know and maybe that's where you want to be because of the way the city treated this to an argument that does not depend on his status with regard to the property it just for a car just depends on the discretionary nature of the decision that's a different mine well your honor if there is no two protected due process if there is no due process interest that needs to be words unless there's a protected interest here at issue there was no requirement that the city go through you know follow certain procedures fine i mean that's that's really the bottom line here there was no protected property interest and because there was no proper  his relationship to the space but because of the nature of the license correct credit not interested anymore and in effect but but if that's the case and the fact that the landlord backed out would be irrelevant and  the fact that they didn't allow it to go forward because the light of life the landlord backed out might be at least on equal protection grounds a problem well i think i think that's what the that's you're absolutely correct your honor i think the the fact that the property only pulled out that's then which was what you seem to be saying then maybe we do need to know more and have an amendment to the complaint as to whether other people were not allowed to go forward when the prize even though they weren't  deny alito men and it's particularly broad words here lead to men's already been granted at least once and for this case twice second of all with the first of the first minute complaint was as of right or was that  think the fact of the matter is is that the that the pilots were given a two year period in this case in which to allege sufficient claims of equal protection in those two years and then when i say two years i'm talking about from the point where arises from the inability to appeal your honor i think what the inability to appeal i would say that they would in that circumstance they would have to say that there were other office case two thousand and thirteen decision class of one plaintiffs have to allege an extremely high degree of similarity between themselves and the persons to whom they compare themselves and in fact in  even if the property owner was not participating the denial of a license to do something in the building ok your honor well i think i think that that's an interesting question here i'm not sure that's the way the complaint alleges i think the complaint is alleging i mean it's not entirely clear what the complain the protection claim is but it would seem to me that what they're alleging is they were treated somehow differently than other individuals applying for permits and i think really at the core of that question is if the court if they could find one other to quickly address a few points i disagree with the premise that the law of the circuit is all over the place with respect to the right to amend when with questions not me in the district court we cited to the binondo case which says that the fact that no discretion i won't go into to the criminal prosecution argument other than to say that as as several of you identified it's an entirely different thing is apples and oranges and what we what my client pled to the no contest plea had nothing to do with the allegations that are made in this complaint as established by the fact that the criminal charges were filed in july i'm sorry april  has twelve exceptions under the california building code right sounds very wrong but there are but but again it's because the facts that give rise to our complaint didn't occur until after the criminal charges were filed months later so there is no relation there's no violence to the criminal process done by this by this complaint the last thing i would say which seems to be the most important point to focus on is the property interest and there was a statement by counsel that we have not cited any authority to support the notion that there's a property interest here and i don't think that's correct this circuit in wedges ledges identified the manufacturer of a crane would in addition to the operators of that game pursue these claims of this nature to pursue nine hundred three claims and so if the manufacturer of the game not just the operator could sue because of the deprivation of a license to the operator that game that is a significantly more tenuous connection but that the problem you have here is once the owner steps in and says the owner of the property i don't want the licenses i don't want the appeal why doesn't that trump the right of somebody who has a contract to manage and if there's a dispute on that it's a contract dispute between you and the owner mostly because the reason why the owner of the property ended up sending that letter was because they were coerced by the city into doing it which is all part and honor previously and didn't seem to have any requirement that there be a property out that was the third point i was going to make in the process the first one was what i just said the second one was that as i said before these are independent claim