good morning your honour's just again ellsworth on behalf of ford motor company the question before the court in this appeal is whether it is more likely than not that at least five million dollars is that issue in a class action complaint that  full refund of the sale or lease price of every ford f one fifty sold or at least in the state of california over a five year period the answer to that is is plainly yes i notice of removal need plausible allegation that cafe's five million dollar amount in controversy requirement is met and here ford supported its plausible allegation with a declaration that identified that just a subset of the class three model years alone and just looking at sales of those model years included more than sixty eight thousand vehicles the declaration also pointed out that the average manufacturer suggested retail price for those vehicles was over forty five thousand dollars that gets you to three billion dollars that are in controversy based on just that subset of the class is the below give you any notice that it was considering  it did not your honor after the notice of removal was filed there was no request for email and from the plaintiff the parties moved to briefing a motion to dismiss which the plaintiff filed its opposition and suppositions said nothing about there being a jurisdictional problem it was only at the end of the district court's decision on the motion to dismiss that it decided once there was no longer federal question jurisdiction that it would look to whether  refund that's correct your honor that's correct and in doing so there are a number of errors with the district court's analysis starting with the fact that it didn't discuss any of the facts from mr fi's declaration that ford had submitted concerned i gather the judge was concerned that you know they can ask whatever they want in their complaint they ask for the value i think of what they pay as restitution but there's no identified it's the song beverly count and the two counts under the california commercial code but two other counts of the complaint that the district court never discussed seek a full refund of the purchase price and that's you would they be if they prevailed would they be entitled to a fee refund so your honor i think that the question is so one of those counts is an unjust enrichment count and one of those counts is the consumer legal remedies act and what this court has repeatedly said is that the amount in controversy cannot be conflated with the amount of damages that are likely to be ultimately recovered there's nothing that requires an offset and i'm just in richmond count there's nothing that requires an offset under the consumer legal remedies act and just to be clear when there is more than three billion dollars at stake the amount of offset even under the three statutes that involve an offset would have to be more than ninety nine percent to get you under cafe's five million dollar amount in controversy this is not a close question this is not like cases where you might be at five million one hundred thousand and there is really some work for the district or to do to see if that is more likely than not this is a case where ford's evidence showed and it was uncontested evidence that there was more than six hundred times the amount in controversy requirement just from a portion of the class action i think it's  if you read the cases that are cited in the briefs you'll see that cases that are about bags of potato chips cases that are about strollers cases that are about energy bars meet the five million dollar threshold without significant  proposition i understand the declaration was submitted probably wasn't savitt with an eye toward proving the proposition because at that stage all you understood all you had to do was put it at issue and and  question becomes suppose i agree with you that it is a good case to be made for the five million dollar barrier to be met is there sufficient evidence to justify and that declaration said this is the quote from the decision nationwide sales of zero impact bars for the last four years exceed five million dollars and this court without even holding oral argument found that that statement in the declaration was a sufficient basis to make it more likely than not they'll more than we have a statement like that in front of us now i mean what we have is a calculation that reaches to a huge number but it's also a calculation that's dependent upon manufacturer suggested retail price i don't think it's a surprising amount of this room to understand that not all vehicles are actually sold at the sticker price indeed i doubt that very many of those vehicles were sold at the sticker price so already we're moving away from what the declaration offers up doesn't that require some degree of speculation as to how much we move away from that figure so i disagree your honor that it requires any speculation and i would point this court to the number of cases where it has said that reasonable chains of logic and reasonable assumptions can be made from the evidence that's before the court if you set aside the sticker price if you have questions about the sticker price just the fact that there are sixty eight thousand plus vehicles alone means that if there is more than seventy four dollars for each vehicle at stake in this case you're over the five million dollar threshold five million dollars is not a big number when you're talking about this many vehicles in a very populous state over a five year period and this court has said if you look at the barra case and the lacrosse case it this court fleshed out the idea that while speculative is speculat statements aren't enough and you can't have things that are pulled out of thin air you can use as a defendant reasonable chains of logic and that's because all that there has to be at the removal stage is a plausible allegation by a preponderance of the evidence is it more likely than not that this complaint seeks to place at issue more than five million dollars when you have two causes of action that alone seek a full refund of the purchase price you have others that se may involve an offset you have attorneys fees you have injunctions you have civil penalties there are all sorts of confirmation from the complaint coupled with the number of vehicles and as icing on the cake you can look at the the s r p and get you to the easy conclusion that it's more likely than not that there's more than five million dollars at stake this court has stressed that jurisdictional rules are meant to be quick and simple to apply using the average m p that's the figure that a manufacturer has at hand all manufacturers who don't sell directly to consumers whether you're selling through a distributor through a big box retailer through a franchise you know how many many products went into a state and what the price was you may not know if they were sold on sale but you can as we pointed out in our brief even if you assume they were sold for fifty percent of the average m s r p and even if you assume there was a good morning your honour's may please the court i am joshua and i represent stephen schneider in this appeal about jurisdiction and evidence jurisdiction is the power for the court to hear a case and to provide relief case including future attorneys fees and costs will not exceed five million dollars your honor i can't make that stipulation imply isn't this a federal case under cafe well i can't make the stipulation because the parties can't conf i believe this is you think the damages might exceed five million dollars especially if they include attorneys fees your i do hope they exceed five million well then why aren't we in federal court i mean you're going to argue all you want about ford having to prove things before it actually wasn't put to the test of proving things the court pulled this rabbit out of the hat and i understand the why he did it but is there any real doubt that the potential claim here the amount at issue exceeds five million dollars well if you look at the answer the question is no why are we wasting our time well your honor if we look at what ford posited in its brief for the motions as i understand that we're here on the rim and issue but in ford's brief they said that this is a one off issue so just for truly believe that this case is three billion dollars or is it a one person individual case we filed in california and any defendant who thinks he has a defense thinks it should be zero that doesn't mean ok we'll treat zero as the amount and controversy of call your client the question is what is your claim and your claim on the face of it is wildly over five million dollars i will put forth your honor that the complaint itself does not state any dollar amount and afford had removed just on the complaint and just on a notice of removal they would have been fine until plaintiff or the judge contested that then at that point i believe complaint the complaint controls what relief my client and hopefully the putative classes seek that's all i'm in no that's not true you can't avoid federal jurisdiction for example by not including any statement as to the amount and controversy and we're not have to read the complaint and figure out what it's what it seeking and you won't stipulate to seeking or collecting less than five million dollars so why should we assume that's all the complaint reaches well if you look at the complaint and this for did it looks unclear they didn't know what the amount of controversy was so for took the additional step before removing to add evidence and i believe that step is the key that distinguishes this case from the li of cases in this court how much isn't controversy in this case i don't know really you don't know i've got this case on and you didn't know what you were were aiming for i don't believe that your honor that's i simply and a truck that fifty thousand dollars yes we have a three billion dollars clowe case in wyoming in federal court for at least on your time with us or brought us here and there and seems to be entitled to bring us here so why are we in federal court why are we fighting over this question judge clouseau do not believe that this case one federal court really looked at he had reasons perhaps for wanting to get off his calendar but he didn't give a reason for why i think the amount in controversy is really less than five million dollars you're on if you look at the evidence in front of the evidence that ford put in front of judge klausner with the notice of removal that's the evidence that he got and by looking at that he didn't know it was forged job to tell well there are two different problems with that one is that he issue hadn't been put on the table so ford really shouldn't have been put to the test at that point but the other issue as i watch your brief and it busy argues that this this person doesn't have personal knowledge we should disregard it none of which is ever discussed by the dis you're reaching for reasons why we should disregard what's in front of us even leaving aside the question of whether the question is really in front of the district court of the time it's he had to use the question i can't figure out for the life of me how it could be  seriously maintained that the amount in controversy this case is less than five million dollars and you still haven't come up with an explanation the most you're saying is that well ford's got to prove it and my answers are that are first not at that stage and second how  that that it hasn't proven it already because it really seems to me like an incredible waste of time and you're and i do believe it's a waste of time to be in federal court we file this case why cafe is there why is it a waste of time for us to take on the question as to whether these cases in federal court and for do not put the evidence to show that this case belongs in federal court and what you offered mr fry's declaration and that's what i i'm looking at we are a case law they can do this and they can do that and they did that with the notice of really what you know the question for me is whether that just passed if you make the reasonable inference is that counsel just went through it i don't know but it just doesn't satisfy the problem here with what happened here is judge  he's ruling on the motion to dismiss and of said he said there's no jurisdiction here because i got rid of the one federal claim and it doesn't look like this is really worth and he just he doesn't issue an order to show cause he doesn't do anything to him alert the parties he just says you're going to state court know we did not move from that right so you must have thought it belonged in federal court because you're careful thoughtful lawyers i think i would agree that we are careful thoughtful lawyers but we did file in california court but the removal was pretty obviously somebody looked at this and said looks like the not rely on the complaint itself so they provided him contest that i did not confess i know you are and so it's teed up with what we have which raises both the questions of how could the district court have decided that issue at that point since it hadn't really been teed up but more importantly for my purposes how could there possibly be a question at this point factually as to whether the amount of controversy exceeds five million dollars based on what we have in front of us how can you reach any other conclusion and based on what we have in front of us is mr five is that chlorination he has two sentences that talk about the manufacturer suggested retail price you can test that i'm not contesting that trucks we know that ford didn't sell the trucks mr fi is an engineer he test vehicle performance how does he know how many trucks are sold in california he looks a business record thirds obvious i think or doesn't pay attention to how many ford f one fifty s you're sold in california i believe they do you are but we're looking at summary judgment type evidence can this not that's one that's one of the things you're one of the many things you're confused about all we're looking for is a plausible allegation that the amount in controversy seats five million folks but ford put forth evidence with its notice of removal and that evidence pretty strongly supports the proposition that there's a plausible basis to conclude the amount in controversy is o five million bucks and and i haven't heard any i hear you trying to poke at that but i haven't heard anything that could possibly support any other conclusion and so that's why this whole thing seems to me like an enormous waste of time  and you're not doing yourself any favors by continuing to argue that there's an issue there unless you can point me towards something that suggests there really is a serious question as to that proposition and you're out of what i believe is a serious question because there are the facts to show this front you want to stipulate to take in less than five million so and you didn't file your client counsel with the time it may not have been you your firm did not file a motion to remain  just impossible to reach a different conclusion unless you point me to such something more than you have so far or you're on it since we are here on a clear errors dish and you don't even know how much you insofar as we can glean from your answers don't know how much is involved in your own losses we don't at this point and we know that it's involved with my client who's had these issues we believe it's a widespread issue because of a bullet in that ford said to a lot of people i mean because you do you believe were involved we don't know what did you a pretty complaint investigation show the pretty complete investigation showed the nature of this transmission that's in this f one fifty and  transmission is what's causing problems so that's what's putting the case in controversy that's what we're fighting about here and we don't want transmission one type of transmission you mean many many many transmission it is one form of transmission that is in many many cars we don't know how many cars we haven't been able to do discovery because we've been in federal court for the past year california's much more liberal discovery that we can get to ten