just one united states versus curve a secret dismissed voluntarily dismissed with prejudice and nd should the claims have been entitled to attorney's fees based on the dismissal the government had originally allege in the complaint that the defendant currency belonged to a victim another garment company that competes with one of the appellant's and so from the very beginning the government has said this is not it's not drug money essentially because in their motion for summary judgment they dropped the drug claim and just said this is money that belongs to the rd party so the government had several options once the case was filed that they could have taken to avoid all the eighteen months of litigation that could have dismissed immediately in favor of the state court litigation they could have asked for a stay of the forfeiture case to allow the state court litigation  they could have moved for an interplay her in the state court case and deposit the money in the state court case and while the parties to fight over the money they're asking just a quick question just turn to set the table sort of back to the topic that we were on the last argument about the standard is i read forty one a too courtney voluntarily dismiss an action quote on terms that the court considers proper that just sounds sort of like max de terms that the court the district court deems proper but you have to we're not going to decide to know whether it was proper we're going to decide whether the district court might reasonably have deemed it improper it's an incredibly broad standard obviously but you have to look understand why the government waits till it's we're days to judgment before it says you know this is affectively mate you know there's no point but but there is no such thing as an act of proceeding an active case and controversy the claimants had motions for summary judgment a motion for summary judgment and a motion to suppress pending they could have won the case and received all the money back under the legal standard of of the complaint what the complaint was alleging in this case but they weren't allowed out opportunity and we were also forgetting that mulatto gado was not part of that state case so to say oh it's pointless to allow her to bring her own claim in this case makes no sense at all because she was not part he was never defined in that case they never claimed that she was involved in any of that activity is the ledge in the state court case at the very  minimum a lot of sagada had an active case and controversial she had standing in the court found that she had standing government did not contest that in this appeal so to just suddenly deprive her of being able to bring her case at the very minimum makes is an abuse of discretion in this but she has she has worked out a settlement you know she worked out a settlement but she had to suffer eighteen months of litigation in attorney's fees to be forced to work out the settlement where she got all her money back every penny went to her or to her attorney so she won essentially as a result of eighteen months of litigation so she had no opportunity to so  to how the case produced a judgment the forfeiture case reduced to judgment and get it went on a motion to suppress or went on a motion for summary judgment because the court took that away by buying the government's case and so at the very minimum we can separate them out to represent both parties all parties in this case but we can separate that out easily it should be it should be no doubt that this god was not was not her case wasn't effectively mo d by the state court case and that's the whole purpose of the civil asset forfeiture reform act is that it was the idea of congress the bipartisan congress and passed and that act was to level the playing field between the government and claimants and for it in particular someone like him to sell gado who cannot afford an attorney in the beginning so she had to able to retain a counsel who could say ok i'll look towards the attorney's fees and it wasn't a  and twenty times that amount and so that's the purpose of care for a and the attorney for the statute there in the fee shifting statute is to be able to allow someone like that to come in the court and there's plenty of circumstances where person with a modest income or savings can't afford to hire counsel and the whole purpose of the law in passing in two thousand was to give those people an opportunity to go to court and be able to lease retain counsel and get their i'm sorry the response didn't use the words no it should have been with prejudice no it did not use those words but in effect it use that word saying it's caused her reparable damage by making her contest this case and what happened then is the before the court issued its order the order then the following day ignored that motion to dismiss with prejudice and just went ahead and signed the order you filed a motion to does to alter or amend the order of dismissal in addition to that right and it didn't raise this issue oh i see how it was i'll climb a banner ship being a reason not to do it with brett without prejudice i don't remember whether that was that very specific request but i think it and i'm just i'm just searching you know the record where that argument about salvador his claim of ownership being a reason why this should be done with prejudice as opposed to without prejudice i was in the mo ever race i was raised in the motion to dismiss with prejudice very clearly raised in that motion that was filed before the court entered its final order so the court could have waited and allowed the brief full briefing on that before issuing of the order in the court the district court just disregarded that the objections to the order and the motion of the smith with prejudice which was filed before the court enter the order are you suggesting that any time the government files a forfeiture proceeding day the government could not dismissed without prejudice or just in this case just in this case the civically it should not be a percent or percent for say role and this particular i'm not saying just in this case been cases some ritualised where there's eighteen months or so or a lot of litigation where they've been current a lot of attorneys fees and and then they dismiss at the last minute when there's a motion for summary judgment or a motion to suppress pending life into the old cliche that no good deed goes unpunished in the interest of conserving judicial resources and eventually the parties resources to the government offered to voluntarily dismiss its case without prejudice in light of the outcome of the state court proceeding district court acted well within its broad discretion in taking the government up on that offer and in denying the claimants motion for prevailing party attorneys fees i think your honour's understand arguments briefly respond to a couple points that my friend on the other side  therefore the district court of use discretion by not dismissing with prejudice but this court time and time again has rejected that argument in published cases ponton berg being perhaps the leading one in that case the  fact that the plaintiff moved to dismiss while the summary judgment motion was pending was not sufficient to trigger a clear legal prejudice warranting dismissal with prejudice and that's exactly what we have here so i'm happy to address any other questions that your honors have we concur with just prior to that the arguments with respect to missile got have not been preserved trust you don't need the full five minutes no i don't your honor but i find it ironic that the sole argument the government has made is that well we did this to pervert preserve judicial resources and as opened my argument there were several options the government had at the very beginning the case immediately after followed it filed its complaint to preserve judicial resources one was to dismiss it immediately because there would even if we concede that there were other options available to the government this is the option that the government chose and you've got to convince us that in so doing that was an improper decision on the part of the government so wrecked like conceding that there were certainly other options but waiting until the resolution of the state court case how is that improper it's not clear on the record that they were waiting for the resolution of the case they could have  could have been resolved and early on but it was a default judgment in their case because the problem was that they were litigating in this case at the same time and mr colorado who was in that case not government did move to dismiss voluntarily dismiss this matter whether the district court abused his discretion and saying if there's really this is pointless to continue i'm going to grant and there is no reason and to dismiss her case without prejudice she was not part of that case and the government may no argument as to why miss ogata's case should be just thrown thrown away and then she she got her money back so she had to litigate for eighteen months and a current attorney fees for eighteen months no judicial resources for were preserved as the government argued for eighteen months for the salgado and so she has an attorney debt now  after eighteen months and she won the case she got her money back the government pushed the case especially forcing the the the claimants to settle with the with the other  party in the state court case forced her to settle with that case when she was even part of that case so she had to do a settlement agreement with a party that was not even part of the forfeiture case but she got her money back and that settlement exactly she got everything back in the settlement and that's what kafir is about you litigate for eighteen months and don't preserve judicial resources for eighteen months you win the case by getting all your money back after eighteen months to settle the case right yourself while she had no choice she got a money back saddle is your potential claim for attorney's fees she didn't settle with the government the government did not prevail in the case she she prevailed against the government essentially when they dismissed the that's a key word there prevailed essentially against the government there there was a settlement you have to under kaffir prove that that you have substantially prevailed  the government was dismissed out of the case and then the settlement order was proposed to the district court government had no part no interest whatsoever left in this case and then  its case and said i don't like busy that settlement order judge it gives money back to salvato it says her name and i don't like that thinking oh this is what i'm suggesting thinking oh well if you put that in saying that she gets her money back then she's prevailed so district court i don't like that change that proposed order that these other parties proposed and take her name out of that and so the judge rewrote the order  in following the government's advice rewrote a completely placing its judicial private for on that order and saying ok i'm going to take massage gotto out of the case and i'm going to make my own order and so then the government