what i believe to be sufficiently strong factual information to establish that the city of bridgeport police department and its city attorney as well as an assistant attorney in the department and gauged in disparate treatment in the making and in force meant of contracts for legal services for its employees this case can be looked at in two lights first of all the pleadings in the case demonstrate that the city  bridgeport police department and its city attorney actually engaged in blocking of the creation of contracts for legal services between myself and its employees secondly it also demonstrates that the city in gauged in active attempts to interfere with and impair contracts between myself and clients who had chosen to utilize my legal services in their defense in matters that involved their the admission that the city attorney's office did at regular times in gage attorneys to represent city employees when they were whatever but in terms of the actual issues that caused you damage here we're focused on two cases in particular where they refused to allow you to be appointed to represent these clients there were two who were employees of the bridge for police department however because in his and that's who you're suing here in this case correct but i believe that because the trial court looked to evidence in a nother case that involved the bridgeport board of education but also its city attorneys i think it's appropriate for the court to look at the factual that exactly that may bear on the evidence that this was racially motivated if there are other similar cases correct but the cases that we're focused on where the district court found a statute of limitations problem are t that those two refusals to hire are time barred then that would be the end of this particular case regardless of what might have happened in other situations involving other clients and other because under jones v r r donnelly there is a four year statute of limitations rather than the three year statute of limitations that the trial court apply under donnell is said that there is that savings that you which allows the four year statute to be applied rather than the state's three year statute limitations and in which case if you were to apply donnell i was well within the four years in filing this complaint but secondly even if this court decided that the for your statute of limitations did not apply i believe that under even the three year statute the claims were timely in this sense this matter first came before the trial court in connecticut under the claim that was leave of court to end that case which was well within the three years by adding the celts and the facts related to the bridge for police department as well as the office of the city attorney and it is my considered opinion that the trial courts when it this allowed the amendment may it may have done but then that would be an issue to be raised in the appeal of that case right i mean is there any you want your centrally saying is that under something like rule fifteen the or somewhat similar source of authority the allegations made here in this complaint somehow relate back and should be deemed to have been filed in two thousand and twelve because but but is there any precedent for doing that across cases and it's one thing to  say you know some allegation made in this complaint relates back to a prior superseded complaint on amended complaint or something them original complaint in this case but do you have any precedent that says if i tried to make a claim about these facts in a completely different proceeding and was denied that and i didn't file promptly the complaint against these defendants about that incident then filing a complaint later after the statute has run against these defendants an independent complaint relates back to the time when i attempted to amend a different complaint a different case with other people to bring this up so i think the question is are we really talking a different party or a different defendant we're talking to bridgeport board of education as well as the police department but they office of the city attorney which is really the moving party in terms of deciding what individuals are permitted to contract for legal right i understand but if you have additional claims to make statute has run again assuming it has there's an alternative argument for you that only is necessary if there is no four years that your limitations is is that does that work i've never seen that before  is there any precedent for that i am not able to cite at this point but defendants have argued that i sat on my rights by not filing and i would say that that is not factually what happened in this instance and can i ask one other question about yet another alternative way of finding this to be timely you are also making a claim of interference with the contract that you had with the individuals and i want to make sure i understand that claim that again relates to these same individuals mr valentino and mr vasquez artist is is the idea that after the city refused to appoint you to represent these people at city expense they nevertheless retained you and agreed to pay you themselves but the city interfered with that by things like calling up the fellow and saying don't want to quieten saying don't hire her hire somebody else well that is one factual scenario yeah but there is also the far more direct factual scenario where the legal relationship contract really had already been entered between myself and sergeant valentino and the city attorney went so far as to have it's all one appointed person as another mile and right here and right so you're saying that those acts are not just the city refusing to contract with you but those acts which occurred otherwise were able to would have paid you right and is there any damage from that in other words did they is this going to be a case of sort of maybe it's good enough nominal damages because that is a racially motivated interference with the contract but nevertheless they continued you continued to represent them they continued to pay you or is this a case where they then fired you as a result of this interference i was not fired by them i continued to represent them however i think there is damage there in the sense that it can be inferred that one of the reasons for the city attorney's refusal to contract with me and to interfere with those existing contracts was so that in the future others would be wary of utilizing my clients walked away from you as their own lawyer or you did not receive whatever compensation was due to you under the contracts with those individual clients whether from a contingency or something else that's that's  not discontinue my services i'm going to say probably because they know me to be you know you would agree but if you don't represent them of course and in fact in the case of officer valentini we were able to get the plaintiff in the case who had sued him to voluntarily dismiss the matter understood and i'm going to say that that was due in some part to my skill as a litigator which would which is set forth in some detail in judge place the court bridgeport deputy city attorney john bull headed for the apple e's i'll begin where this case should have been properly did and before the district court the plaintiff missed the statute of limitations on her federal claims on october the twenty ninth of two thousand and ten the city definitively advised the plaintiff that it had not and would not authorize or compensate her to represent city employees in litigation pursuant to the bridgeport city charter it is the employees in this case the city of bridgeport fulfilled its obligations an employee went and apparently separately retained miss miller to represent his personal interest in some way or form miss miller was advised that the city of bridgeport would not compensate her for those services on october the twenty ninth two thousand and thirteen plaintiff statute of limitations would have run based upon that noticed that definitive notice that conduct the notice from the city attorney was definitive there was a denial of a newly submitted invoice that miss miller had issued approximately three years later apparently an attempt to revise the statute of limitations argument the district court properly rejected a plaintiff civility to forever allege new facts based upon a prior to nial in order to extend a statute of limitations for your statute of limitations does not apply in this case plaintiff's claim is a refusal to contract not post contract interference in this case the letter that was sent by the city attorney's office was  did not stop mr miller from being retained by any other client for their own personal reasons in fact what you just heard from attorney miller is that those clients did retain her and maintain her representation there  not a claim later interference with those contracts in the form for example of a city attorney assistance the attorney calling this client of hers and telling her that he would do better to not be represented by her but to hire a mr bucci who it's not specifically alleged in the complaint is white but i think that's what it if you look him up on the internet that's what you see there is no such actionable claim under federal law and the reason for that is there is no notwithstanding any comments that attorney miller claims to have been made that any such comment would have been motivated anyway by race or has and racial relationship in this case and that is the linchpin of her federal base claims she has to make an allegation something that shows that a cop was made that was racially motivated that the basis of that comment was to stop her from being retained or to interfere with a contractual relationship based upon her race there is no ok so this is a twelve b six this is no such limitations issue this is the as to those claims of interference with the relationship between ms miller and clients who retained her individually there's not a claim that that is untimely is just a claim that there is no basis in those no no plausible claim of racial motivation is that i don't think you can discern the timing from the complaint yet it's not going to fall within it i'm not saying that it doesn't fall within the statute of limitations to the extent that it would have existed and may not have fallen within the statute of limitations it was clearly incumbent upon the plaintiff to make that clear on the record in advance that argument was not done you mean the i'm sorry just to clarify when you say it was incumbent on the plaintiff to make that argument what argument precisely to the extent that the plaintiff would try to claim that there was some sort of a post contract interference which i don't read into this complain t there are stray comments that are referenced but there is no allegation that any such straight calm comment had a roach racial motivation or was any way related to trying to block or interfere with a contractual relationship based upon racial grounds in dealing with the motion to dismiss in this matter the plaintiff did not bring forward facts that would show that any such stray comments would have fallen within the statute of limitations are you saying saying that there is no standalone claim of interference or are you saying something else i don't see any standalone claim of interference in this case it's simply refuse all to contract with ms miller the client was free to contract the city of bridgeport had no contract with attorney miller as a matter of fact definitively told miss miller from the outset that it would not contract with her or allow her to represent the clients in claim she was clearly free to represent those individuals and in regard to their own personal interest year wait no i have that wrong that's the ruling but it is in it's as a war it's a four right sorry now five s a fourteen which is i was looking at the appendix but it's the same thing count and so that's your that's your response is that that is not at all part of and can't be regarded as part of the federal claim well your honor it's a separate cause of action there are no allegations  constituting any federal claim in connection with any such allegation here any else no unless the court has any other questions for me i believe that the district court's opinion is very precise sets forth very good grounds for its decision in this matter and we've done everything we could to advance our arguments in the support the with regard to the complaint in this case all of the factual allegations are incorporated by referenced into each of the subsequent counts including count number five which is the tortious interference claim what i think is important for this court to look at is that the fact that the trial court determined that there was not sufficient evidence of racial discrimination or motivation shown by the pleadings in the complaint and i would disagree with counsel that a pla a discrimination matter needs to show evidence of racially based comments we all know that that is the very unusual case in today's modern world what is relevant is whether or not there was disparity in treatment even if a defendant said all of the right things and did not use any racial slurs or epithets based there still needs to be a plausible allegation of racial motivation and what you're saying i take it is that you at least have a prime case because the attorneys that were being pushed on your client by the city attorney were white that's correct and  and furthermore that there was a pretext shown by the eventually defense that the defendant's right which was an alleged conflict of interest that they claimed that i had and i would suggest to the court that that was really a red herring because when you look at the city charter upon which they did were lied to say that i had a conflict of interest doesn't relate to employees at all it relates to municipal officers and that is the plain meaning of the charter allows the city attorney to make those kinds of decisions with regard to officers but as a police officer a sergeant or lieutenant is not a municipal officer in the sense that the charter means and so we believe that the court went beyond the plain meaning of the statute in saying that yes the the defendants had a viable claim of conflict of interest and we also pointed out to the trial court that even if you were to accept this idea that the city could look at a potential conflict of interest we had attorney tom beauty the former mayor of the city a caucasian male who regularly handled cases for employees of the city and against the city in one instance with regard to sergeant valentini there was the representation by attorney beauty of one employee who was a police officer against two other police officers but you may be right about all of these and i'm sympathetic but do you agree that the principal issue and the issue that judge meyer was focused on related to the sense of them titian's well is there anything else county because he refuses excise pendent jurisdiction i think the court should not skip over the fact however that the court the trial court misapplied the law as it relates to racial discrimination and how you show that what he in essence said was that the claim and the facts of racial discrimination that i did present he said was undermined by the fact that the city had one other african american attorney who was an employee of the city attorney's office and another african american lawyer who was in a majority white firm bureaucratese it often though i agree that if we disagree with you