that we would like this court to follow in its footsteps that it set out in the thomasville case and i'm sure a judge prior and has tjoflat are familiar with that was decided about a year ago that case involved exactly the same issue times i have difficulty remember decided a week ago well i sympathize but i've studied those cases and i'm here to refresh your memory a little bit what we want you to do your honor is to follow the same principles and same guidelines that you set out in that case and i want to talk about that just a little bit at the end it to me the most productive use of your time would be spent on the punitive damages argument it seems to me order allowing a lawyer to lobby marilyn's assets to damages unless you have an award of general damages i think we brief that pretty well but mr winter will talk about that too because it was his client ms murphy that got levied against to satisfy the judgment and so that is he talks more about that than i do oh  murphy is that there were no general damages imposed against him and there's lots of case law this side in the briefs where not only isn't that the fugitive damages statute that says that punitive damages are additional damages meaning there have to be general damages first there's also a lot of case law that speaks to that as well i did want to address i appreciate the court's question but we feel like the jurisdictional argument is is even more of a ville case specifically to cut straight to the chase there's none none of the criteria in rule of evidence eight o three because toadying of the evidence contemporaneous preparation of the documents  regular course of business and so forth none of that is satisfied in the case of bart a the affidavit that were submitted by alliant nowhere state that that was the custom of the records no where state there made  regular course of business and so forth we have ject did in multiple briefs even move to strike those affidavits and the trial court district court simply did not even address the issues that we raised to compare domicile of all the entities and there was complete diversity on both sides of the and evidence to support it well that's the problem here are there wasn't evidence to support it and this is exactly what happened in thomasville the thomasville case and if you will simply follow the principles of law that you laid out in the thomasville case there's got to be a custody of the records it's got to be contemporaneous and so forth and in the absence of those criteria the affidavits are not competent and don't are not sufficient to satisfy diversity jurisdiction judge murphy you're correct judge story did lay out exactly what he thought the citizenships were but that was based the problem is that was based on incompetent affidavits quite candidly what the district were laid out was simply a boilerplate recitation of what the airline plaintiffs laid out i'd like to emphasize judge prior again the importance to me that if he was entitled to credit all the declarations was any i'm sorry it was in tide the district court was entitle to credit with that declarations that were submitted no your honor that's exactly why we're here and i believe that's why this court issued a jurisdiction question that wasn't satisfied issue to remain and that wasn't properly satisfied followed by the district court finding that alliance declarations were not candid and were not i can't i can't see that i agree agree with this i think what your point is is that alliance supplied the domicile or resident of all its entities to support diversity jurisdiction and your clients believed perhaps that an additional entity might have been involved in the in the in the problem you urge us to address as a judge to requote did not rule that out and i'm not sure he has to do that well perhaps you may not like the language so let me rephrase it maybe more palatable to you the burden of proof is on the parties claiming diversity jurisdiction to establish with competent evidence and the totally different procedure and the no one thomas judge story got the parties together and laid out the parameters of how you were going to proceed that's correct ok i only mentioned thomasville i agree although by the way two  entities are the same the aligned eleven entities were in the thomasville case and they are also parties to this case so there is some overlap there the judge i'm just talking about the principles are the same the evidentiary principles are the same and quite candidly i don't know how you can about ninety thousand dollars were there wasn't a judge i believe was a di believe it was eight point nine million plus change and i don't know the exact figure eight point nine million plus one point one million one million puno damages defense were assessed to maryland one hundred thousand of our punitive damages there was a contract judgment against mr murphy only and then that that became alliance claim which the district court here in georgia assessed against her ms murphy so she had to turn over proper all she had on the proper hundred thousand yeah challenge that's where that really gets to separate question is the million dollars over a million dollars your argument that can only be against spence and not against merit that's correct so we were not it doesn't depend be compensated fully it's compensatory only no authority i could have in my briefing i work i would work on this like crazy i could find nothing that lets it let alone a u f t a case nothing that lets one party have to pay t of another i'll save the balance of my time for a bottle one is whether marijuana vincent were subject to an award of punitive damages in the second issue is how reliant is supposed to collect an award if it's proper as my adversaries explained there doesn't seem to be any dispute as to the hundred thousand dollar punitive award entered against maryland we're talking only about the million dollars in punitive damages answered entered against then sent he does argue that there can be no award entered against him because there were no actual damages but the georgia court of appeals in the stinchcomb case has has rejected that argument already this court sitting under erie is bound to follow georgia law on that score so i think that leads us pretty quickly to the question of  punitive damages is properly assessed against vincent how is a lion supposed to collect that award when the whole reason the punitive damages award has been entered is because vincent has a project lead transferred all of his money over to maryland to prevent a to an award of punitive damages against maryland that the law doesn't technically support well i think it's important to recognize your honor that the money that is it was taken to satisfy the punitive damages was not  transfer right plus over a million dollars for funa damages no the amount of fraudulent transferred transfers proved to the jury exceeded the eight point nine million dollars that was  due under the earlier judgment against events that claimed only goes to well that's correct your honor so that what we explained in our briefing was that there are two alternatives either the punitive damages can be as d from the assets that vincent had transferred to maryland in the same proceeding or you could have a separate pursuit to get it it was entitle to give her money otherwise and so far as it was not necessary to defeat the creditors kline i don't think that that's true your honor i think that the way that george's uniform project transfer act operates is that a creditor is entitled to avoid a transaction to the extent the transaction is made generally to proved in the jury found that to be a meritorious claim the jury further found that vincent because of his misconduct was subject to a million dollars in punitive damages so i'll repeat in a sense what i had stated earlier which is that there are two alternatives one is to have an entirely new proceeding where the exact same facts come in and a lie it has to prove once again that those same transfers that the jury already found to be fraudulent were affected for actionable under goofed up the liability doesn't have to exist as at the time of transfer it has to be that that the transfer was made either because of an existing liability or to evade potential future liabilities and that's wh after the fact then yes you have to file another action and ask maryland for a risk a court to award your clients the million dollars in punitive damages that she would do fraudulent all you got and yes you court of appeals that we submitted through twenty eight j letter and internet enter financial mid town emphasizes that the equitable powers of a court entertaining a fraudulent transfer case are sufficiently expansive to permit the remedy we have here and not to require alliant to keep having to file more and more lawsuits to collect upon the claims whenever they arise it bears mention also that your my adversary suggested that if the million dollars was taken from maryland then vincent suffers no punishment and the intent of the punitive damages is somehow thwarted but to that point i think it's important to recognize that the record me at the evidence in the record here establishes that vincent was funding his lifestyle by using a t m cards and blank checks for the bank accounts that he had given to marilyn so in fact taking the money that he had approximately been using after transferring legal title to maryland is the only way to  accomplish that is by taking away the assets that he is using that are in maryland's possession which is what the district court permitted in this case if i can move on briefly to the jurisdictional issue mr crime or spoke at length of rise in the opposite posture because judge story found based on the documents five hundred pages worth of documentation that there was sufficient evidence here we believe he was certainly entitled to credit the documentary evidence he was entitled to credit the authenticating declarations as a result we don't see any serious issue with subject matter jurisdiction and the thomasville case strikes us as a fairly irrelevant on on the cross appeal that we filed with respect to pre trial that the plaintiff if he prevails is entitled to compensation for the time value of money spent by litigating the case and georgia draws a distinction between circumstances in which the amount of the dispute is known beforehand where that where the only thing that's required for pre judgment interest is a demand before judgment and circumstances where nobody knows with the amount you want well your honor i don't believe it's a double recovery under georgia law but the judgment is not liquid walk turns on whether the amount in dispute is known the amount in dispute is disclosed in the complaint here she has defenses but this is not a circumstance where we can know this is required because maryland can't know how much is on the hook for i mean that's fundamentally the issue with respect to this double recovery at issue that the judge prior alluded to i think it's important to note that the federal post judgment interest on the earlier judgment amounts to ninety thousand dollars whereas the statutory prejudgment interest is more than two million dollars so if the court were inclined to believe that there was some georgia statutory prohibition on double recovery that ally it has to be given the opportunity to elect which of  the kentucky judgment was entered but our demand was as of the date in twenty eleven on which the complaint was filed and at the statutory rate of interest of seven percent that accrues on a nine million dollars judgment to you to result  in the two million dollars interest figure that we've demanded in this case under georgia law this is not a matter of discretion there are some states that treat pre judgment interest as discretionary including within this circuit florida state are some cases that talk about whether it's an abuse of discretion to award pre judgment interest but because this court is sitting under georgia law there's no discretion here because we acknowledge that there is a liquidated damages awarded against vincent then  avoid entering an award of pre judgement interest with respect to maryland parties go back and forth there's a dispute obviously as to whether the claim against her is liquidated we believe that  because georgia courts have found the tort of conversion amounts to a liquidated claim even though there can be disputes as to the amount that was converted whether a party had some partial rights to possess the property if that is a liquidated claim that the parallel claim for a fr view ought to be treated as liquidated as well now i know that there are a fair number of other issues that have been raised in the briefing in this case that were not addressed by my adversaries and i'm happy to address any of those issues  robert very quickly i'll just go point by point in chronological order judge murphy had a point about whether punitive damages might be recoverable because there was underlying fraud and the answer to that is no fraud alone doesn't justify punitive damages you have to have actual damages or the cases refer to a general damages the mere fact that it was fraud unless there's some actual damages that accrue from that fraud you can't get punitive damages as a practical matter to the gentleman to your honor's what will happen is plaintiffs in those cases less for one dollar in general damages and that has been repeatedly held to justify or to support an award of punitive damages the line plaintiffs did not do that so there are no general damages we just reiterate our point there the inner financial case that was submitted under rule twenty eight so i'm and again we addressed that in our responsive letter that case does not hold in any way shape or form to the contrary of what i just said it does not say that in the absence of general damages you can get punitive damages the holding of inner financial is simply that in a fraudulent transfer case a plaintiff can recover both general and punit damages that's the holding of the case or one of the holdings it has nothing to do with the argument made by vince murphy in this case number two one of your honors commented or counsel commented rather that a line submitted five hundred pages to establish diversity well that's true my short answer there is quantity does not equal quality those documents judge pryor i hope you'll please look at it they just don't cut the mustard no custody and i will repeat it you heard me in and i look at the way you look at thomasville i agree thomasville isn't a precedent it's a different case i'm just talking about the principles one of you all commented about on liquidated damages i think it was judge pryor you're absolutely correct about that they were twenty plus claims every one of them was on liquidated every one of them was tried that's why we spent five days in trial going through each and every one of them they were liquidated we had to get to a jury that's what we all of this is in our briefs that's when a claim liquidated when a jury figures out what it is or your other option is to send and i liquidated them you got that they didn't do it so they don't get pre judgment interest quickly you all talked about double recovery that's also correct they got interest on the kentucky judgment by law so they just they just can't double dip there so the answer then again is that they are not entitled to prejudge an interest  very quickly with respect to punitive damages mr nestor was talking about the idea of filing another proceeding i have to say that in the research we perform i couldn't find the instance of that there's no law to support it but it's an interesting idea so i wonder what i'd do if i but the idea is to put one negative one million dollars on his or her balance sheet or whatever the figure would be to deter the conduct not to come after the other person that was already already paid their award as to the interest of the jury tried to do it here  that was zero point one tenth of one percent of what her net worth was before all that happened they specifically put over a million on him not her only on him not on her and that's just a factual point it's i think it's critical because that was a specific finding they made they just can't million of mr murphy's punitive damages which is what we thought was there as to the interest very quickly the court seems to get and i think that i think that it is a double recovery they're seeking something i was not necessarily explain why that as far as you cannot get that it was a  there is not any provision the law that prevents that allows two forms of statutory interest to accrue against one defendant for the same thing for the same tort so you have it you have one form of statutory interest in a land demanded they submitted a proposed judgment docket for examples where people might have converted in a brief case involved checks liquidated some some somebody stole x amount of money of course that's liquidated somebody stole a check of course if the acquitted either is or it isn't it's not an in between these in this case it's much different we had two  competing interests at stake we had a domestic relations rights or property settlement rights put against a reasonably quick one value determination and that was very fluid the jury literally obviously the jury found  plaintiff very strongly but they could have found anywhere between one dollar and eight point nine million so i guess i've been negative i mean i am i am i talk at preset the court's time thank you for being recess time tomorrow morning at nine o'clock