good morning it's not the words of the law but the internal sense of it that makes the law the letter of the laws the body the sense and reason justin harlan said that nine hundred eighty three in the court this court recognized that trait first justice harlan i tell you you know i've seen a lot of shotgun pleadings but i've never seen one like this eighteen hundred paragraphs yes or five hundred forty six pages yes there you are the plaintiffs in this case had the obligation not only with the pleading standard of plausibility with respect to rico which the standard that the court is is held for rico legally and often practically tends to be higher then the that have a regular action the astonishing thing is that this is this spike this level of detail and cross references and redundancies and everything that you don't want to see in a complaint is that it appears to fail to satisfy those requirements you know the most fundamental of which because it's a rico complaint the requirement of a domestic entry i mean i and jury and i'm at a loss to see where he was wrong about any of it and all you had to do was be right about one of them standing domestic injury shot completing the complaint we believe adequately lays out the concept of vampires hitting stooks parry the stick circuit recognized that when there is a concept a veil piercing i relevant when evaluating whether an injury is direct or indirect in addition judged rational self in a prior case in evaluating a complaint of legend rico that in doing that judge the rash also recognized that the allegation of ale piercing affected his analysis how did it affect his analysis he took it as true and determined that the enterprise was no longer distinct because the allegations were such  individual suing an austrian and a vigil and an austrian company which she's one percent shareholder and they live in austria and you've got to establish a this connection of those two entities there is a one hundred percent shareholder at the beginning and fifty percent of the shares were we lied to unlawfully removed in georgia and so your client is not a shareholder of the american corporation that is correct judge she is not a and what is laughter the are the shareholders of the particular entities and i would submit to the court that with respect to the veil piercing and with respect to georgia law and tell pearson it would permit mrs clock to bring a direct claim against mr klock and the other defendants for what happened and we believe that is consistent with givens of the eleventh circuit why is it consistent with defense well in bivins the court determined that a a case could be brought as a derivative claim in fact judge thrashin is opinion suggested that mrs blackburn a derivative action in austria based on the parent company well begins recognize that a derivative action would be permitted for rico why because when you're looking at where the harm is directed at ivins determined that a shareholder can step into the shoes of a company where the shareholder alleges that there was a wrong directed and targeted at the company itself that's what they haven't said it was directed in target at the company and the shareholder was seeking three dressed damage or harm to the company well in the context of a failed piercing that is not possible because the allegations are that the entities themselves are a alter ego and the entities themselves are a sham so bringing a derivative action when you're cone committing lee alleging that the entity should be pierced wouldn't make any sense and i would submit to the court that if the court were to affirm judge rash decision and mrs glock were to return somewhere with a claim of a derivative action that that claim would be defeated because of her allegations of a piercing because if the companies themselves are merely mr glocks alter ego he can't direct and target himself and that's what was present present in begins what was present in bivins was a claim that the defendants targeted and directed injury at the end of which is what gave rise to permit a direct cause of action a derivative action in peru and provided for standing so under the under the concept of veil out the various predicates that we believe are here the it is not a typical shot completing in as much as it doesn't incorporate all the prior allegations all the prior cause of actions it lays out which particular paragraphs in which particular claims are against which particular defendants and relate to which particular claims and i would submit to the court that in an instance where the plain of is not only alleging a rico cause of action but is also alleging a cause of action to pierce the veil of the second largest gun manufacturer in the world that a level of detail is necessary as it relates to the court's question about the mastic injury how is this a domestic allegations which we believe it must at this stage in a motion to dismiss to judge the rashes concerned that you're trying to ease failed piercing to get around the direct injury requirement because any injury here is in fact and was that naming teleco the company as a defendant would not make any sense because it can't be expected to sue itself and so i would submit to the court that it's not getting around  if she had a derivative climate be a derivative line on behalf of an austrian entity wrong well and your honor because they don't waste would be with respect to the austrian entity which would be not a domestic injury well the austrian entity bones fifty percent of the shares of a ga based editing and when you have a parent and a subsidiary and when you have a veil piercing as between those entities then the then the veil between the sub and the parent also are disregarded and are deemed to know the for the purpose of that evaluation so what you have is an austrian entity owning in part a ga entity we've alleged vale piercing of those entities now you have a direct line by mrs glock a shareholder of one of the two entities against her coat austrian resident shareholder of an austrian entity it is an austrian right is present in your honor we would say that the second circuit in its analysis in beauty best canon would say you look to where the property is and we understand this is an issue of first impression in this circuit we believe that the second circuit got it right and the second circuit's analysis says you look where the where at the property was injured and in the scan in your honor the plaintiff in that case was a person who was a poor was a chilean resident who inherited a fortune from his family who at the time was sick in a hospital in italy there is not a single allegation to be scanned in the least in the opinion that mr gannon was ever in new york ever stepped foot in new york or ever had an account in new york the accounts were set up through a power of attorney and the allegation is that monies were stolen from those account as well as stocks being sold from a safety deposit box in new good morning john floyd for the defendant this court has repeatedly cautioned that particularly with regard to civil rico claims plaintiff must stop and think before filing them that caution was ignored here ms glock reveals the true nature of her case when she says that because she and mr glock jointly built the glock empire a portion of the proceeds of their joint effort rightfully belongs to alec and that is a measure of damages that has absolutely nothing to do with the federal rico statute private civil damages remedy it has everything to do with an austrian divorce and everything about this case has been an agonizing effort by ms glock to shoehorn her austrian divorce not satisfied with thirteen separate cases pending in austria into the american justice civil justice system and into a poor a person suing under rico has to be injured in in this case her business or property ms glock was not injured in her business or property and judge thrashed properly held that she'd have standing for much of the same reason she doesn't have a domestic injury because it wasn't her property that was here she also has the problem that not only did she not have property here but she herself was always in austria there is no allegation that she's ever even been to the united states there's no allegation that she ever directly owned anything in the united states this is all an effort to tease out of her glock does not say what counsel says it says but invest in there were four alleged injuries two were permitted to proceed by the second circuit both involved what the second circuit concluded was tangible property owned by the plaintiff present in the united states at the time it was stolen in one case it was a discrete bank account in new york which was looted by the defendant in the other case they were bearer bonds physically stored in a safe deposit box in the victim's name in new york and those vera bonds were physically removed ms glock has absolutely nothing analogous to that she'd net she never owned a share essence she's claiming that the parent company was looted and you know by you know these transfers to the american company right but never claims that she she owned in any kind of interest and the american company right and that is that is absolutely correct in fact she says she says i didn't own it and i wasn't supposed to own it her theory is it was supposed to be somewhere else not with her right nor does she claim she made a direct investment in the glock inc she doesn't claim that she owned any asset of blocking the buildings it was in she had no right to dispose of those she had no ownership interest the inventory the bank accounts there's never an allegation that anything came out of a bank account of hers in the united states or anywhere else in the world every injury she doesn't have standing because every injury is media by a corporate entity first nothing happens to her that doesn't happen to a corporation first and that flies straight into the brick wall of excuse me i blanked on on the name excuse me this this court standard of requiring a direct injury to the to the property or business of the plane and this is all a dance where we talk about the spirit of the law etc will the laws clear the standards clear it's established by this court and the united states supreme court and this plaintiff can't change it sticks perry doesn't change it sticks where he is an unpublished six circuit case that relies on tennessee law georgia laws exactly the opposite the reverse is mcmahon case precludes precisely the kind of veil piercing that the plaintiff relies on and expressly says georgia will not permit reverse veil piercing where it functions is a substitute for a fraudulent conveyance it's exactly what we're talking about here you moved the assets out fraudulent lee now we don't know that georgia law would require that would would control but if georg controls it's fatal otherwise it's austrian law and we've got no business dealing with this because at the end of the day turning to for an injury mrs black wasn't here her property wasn't here but beyond that if this court were tempted to go down the road of basically paying only lip service to r j our nabisco while undoing the fundamental premise of it by basically saying vale piercing is a magic wand then what would you have to do under this complaint you would first have to engage in veil piercing which by the way doesn't do what the plaintiff says it does because we've got a v in the middle of these parties and collapsing the corporate veil amongst defendants only gives you fewer defendants it doesn't give her any ownership interest in any defendant she's on her side of the v it works vertically but it accomplishes nothing horizontally and therefore her case fails that's why she has the mystical unnamed partnership that appears in this case now every other entity that shows up in this case is identified in meticulous detail we have k g s we have g e s m b h's we have private shift on can adding to my vocabulary as a result of this case we have l l c is around the world we have bank tellers identified in specific transactions but the partnership with no name just silent sales silently through these five hundred forty six pages of  allegations it doesn't have a name it doesn't have a place there's never an office there's never a bank account a piece of property identified it doesn't have an address a phone number there's nothing to suggest any meeting ever took place we don't know when it came into existence how we came to acquire everything in the glock empire there's absolutely nothing there and this is just simple that the original big daddy on the change of a a day application where we move past the connally gibson exercising could we imagine something and we actually look at what's alleged here twamley was a conspiracy case all conspiracy is is a particular type of agreement to it's an agreement with an unlawful object it a partnership is an agreement also as in twamley here there are no facts clad which plausibly establish the existence of that partnership that partnership is the critical unavoidable vehicle for ms glock to have an ownership interest in any of the things she's claimed and it's perfectly clear from reading the complaint judge trash is an experience judge and he's been around the block many times and he looked at this and he understood completely the partnership is nothing but a euphemism for the marriage it is nothing but a vehicle for her to domesticate a divorce here under the guise of triple damages a judge thrashed ruled in favor of the defendants on a day nine b on standing in for an injury we have raised three additional independent grounds under which this court  affirm statute of limitations proximate cause and private securities litigation reform act i want to make sure i answer any question the court has but i do not want to take up the court's time unnecessarily  judge the analysis that we just went through ignores the concept of veil piercing if corporate entities are disregarded if corporate entities are alter egos how can the injury not be direct but that i don't see how bail piercing helps you in the least we believe it does judge in this way you've got a parent company in austria you've got a sub in ga we have a that those entities are alter egos of gas don't clock because they are alter egos of gas don't clock and because it is alleged that gas tone clock committed wrongs he can commit wrongs against himself he cannot target and direct himself and like the eleventh circuit said in mays even after there was an investment in a separate company and the defendant and argued that that was no longer a direct injury lived in austria as she cheats to find it right yes your honor just like the scan and lived in chile and as a citizen of chile and there is no allegation that discounted was ever here in fact the account it was alleged to have been taken from was a trust account we didn't hear anything about t rivet of claims in the second circuit case it was a trust account from which money was taken and in this instance judge we have contested and people property located in new york was that is correct judge it was physical property quite a bit different from this case doesn't i would say that it's analogous to this case judge because in our complaint we allege money was taken from glock inc the subsidiary in smyrna georgia from bank accounts that were located here from you know monies that were that the because we allege failed piercing of that entity and because we allege that those entities are alter egos of gas don't gluck no derivative action could be held so even if we were merely talking about  and it let's take the austrian it out for one second for the purposes of ale piers assume we're only talking about locking in smyrna georgia i would submit to the court that mrs glock could not bring a derivative action on behalf of  inc is an alter ego of gas stone and because she does not allege that gas stone directed and targeted his acts at himself it would not be proper for her to bring  action under bivins because she's not alleging that it was targeted at the end it so therefore even if this was wholly something taking place in smyrna georgia even if this was just mrs gluck with her claim here it would be appropriately under georgia law and under bivins and under stooks perry and under mays we believe an appropriate direct claim by mrs klock against gas don't block based on allegations of of rico violations at an entity that she has pled plausibly should be disregarded because it is his alter ego and that we would submit would be the correct analysis if it were simply here so if we were having this discussion and the discussion were simply mrs glock can't doesn't have standing her claim is not sufficiently direct to bring  may's even when there was an investment in transfer of the partnership interest into a corporation the court thoughtfully went through where the rico actually targeted what the allegations were and determined that in that instance the target of the of the rico conduct was always the individual plaintiffs and despite the fact that the value had been moved into a corporation could still have standing to bring it thank you mr smith  case last case for today is clayton county versus the federal