bankruptcy case has standing to assert antitrust claims against a price fixer overcharge the estate when the estate cannot bring that antitrust claim before cite some cases that allows a party to collect attorney's fees that equal forty seven times the america recovered i'm really interested i'm particularly interested in the illinois and i tr but if you look at it in the aggregate it is significant now here we are dealing with an issue or actually a price fixing practice that is probably taking tens of millions of dollars a year out of the request in order to find out what was really going on here you the amounts that are involved substantially exceed seventy five thousand dollars in order to bring this case  area there are two limitations on that the first is the standard set forth in associated general contractors which is a group of factors that deal with how close the individual is to the injury and who else can bring it etc the factors are interfering now and independent ground for analysis under federal law is the illinois brick standard and that's the end that says that if you are a direct claim if you are indirect purchaser you do not have a point noid has an illinois brick repeal or act which says you have a claim under illinois law if you are an indirect purchase however the illinois brick and now assists does not apply to what we're dealing with here because we are under the associated general contractor standard and not an illinois brick standard because two issues there which are either address one was the objection of the bankruptcy and the other was the ability of the trustee to do it now when these when the issue back in april of two thousand and fourteen was presented that there were five hundred forty one charge on this bankruptcy final trustees report no one had the slightest idea that there was a price fixing scheme going on gary only learned of the price fixing about two years later in two thousand and sixteen in the middle of two thousand and sixteen and decided to take some sort of action at that point so i don't think that it would be reasonable to say that well the fact that you could take what you know now through a lot of  requests and actually a lot of litigation as well and so i well you should have known it in twenty days notice after you were given our directive that there's going to be a five hundred forty one dollars charge now the second objection that you're the second issue that your honor race was why isn't the trustee doing it now there's a couple of answers to that one first dance is that we move to reopen the bankruptcy case after the trustee said no i don't want to reopen the bank  and the bankruptcy judge to sexually sad yeah you know you know about the conspiracy now but it's late to reopen the bankruptcy case because there are issues of finality here so most likely and i think  this is highly probable that no one would have been able to open up the bankruptcy case at that point because the bankruptcy judge was saying that too much time that simply expired we took that to the district court in a district court agreed with what the bankruptcy dealing with a discretionary decision of the bankruptcy court we're dealing with a discretionary decision of that the judge how does the author actor and i think it makes our point stronger because what we're saying at this point is this  state cannot bring that claim because in what the bankruptcy judge largely found was too much time had elapsed and what we're saying is we only discovered the fraud about or not the fraud but the price fixed about two years after the bankruptcy closed b m s was never a party to the bankruptcy report saying five hundred forty one dollars have been charged against the state or bank in technology the twenty base expires no one objects no one knows or has any reason to believe that that point that there was a price fixing scheme involving these bankruptcy services at that point time passes mcgarry two years later learns that there was a price fix the evidence is laid out in front of me gary as the result of a whole bunch of freedom of information act requests mccary file suit this court says no standing because the trustee could do it we didn't appeal that that could be right then we we brought an action to try to open up the bankruptcy in the bankruptcy court just as eight years she tried this district court case it's late so what p m s has actually and we're where the end we should have standing because there is no more efficient anti pain trust antitrust enforcer than we are because of the state can't do it we're the only game  amount of attorneys that were genuinely disputed at that period of time in the district court we offered her a hand up the spreadsheet which showed that we had three hundred sixty thousand dollars into this of the time we filed a state court case for some of that which worked in the prior district court case because the issues are virtually identical so the district court was persuaded that there of there and he said i'm suing for hundreds of thousands of dollars several hundred thousand dollars in attorney's fees that related to the first case and i needed to do that work in order to question of what's legally possible or not and we found out that unless there's a legal certainty that the judgment for the plaintiff will be less than the jurisdictional amount  if you pursued a claim even if it was not a good client and you lost and it's instrumental and you're bringing the next case or the next  ok it can be considered for purposes of the jurisdictional amount and for purposes of recovery of those quite of of those amounts now i'm not saying he deserves it because i don't think there's any the chase and maybe we should get to that so i have a pretty discreet question because the british twice asks us to take judicial response brief how does your argument change or i don't really think it changes much at all i think the focus here is who's the proper part it has the financial incentive because the trustee gets a percentage of the amount that distributed on a sliding scale and so if the trustee has that financials and it also is third circuit like that and then that decision what if that injury to a creditor or corporation is to indirect remote and consequential to permit it to maintain  action it found after a bankruptcy the only person that has that standing is the trustee this court in southwest suburban  accepted that and also cited and with approval below and also cited with approval associated general contractors which itself  purchasers who aren't who aren't purchasing here and they're not doing so why should let's make an exception court said no that was wrong shouldn't have done that we shouldn't we shouldn't do it and then again justice despite the fact that rationales of those cases we're talking about kind of are shooing no longer a group may not apply equal force in all instances because the possibility of allowing an exception even in rather competitors there was a discussion with the banks because the banks were saying we're going out of business we're not going to stay in this business we're not going to  support chapter seven trustees we're not going to take their deposits anymore because the system is broken when the interest rates went down to near zero there was no way to make any money ability of the that were generated prior to the filing of state court case now to them to the merits of the standing issue their position seems to be the same as ours on the overall issue who is the proper party to bring the antitrust claim in a specific case now their answer is the trustee but in this case the trustee has not only refused to do it  distinguishable from most other cases that may that you may see is that the trustee is precluded from doing it because the bankruptcy court has said this case cannot be reopened it is to all so the only potential plaintiffs in this case is not the trust eight not the estate but a creditor of the estate who is suing independently of the bankruptcy proceeding simply under the antitrust law evidence on top of that the bankruptcy court held against this fact that we took a year in the district court to try to bring the case in the first instance i'm not sure whether that was determined to or not but too much time had elapsed no one can bring this case at this point can't the state can't we gary is the only game in town now mr herman spent a fair amount of time trying to explain to you  arise make it virtually impossible to announce a black letter rule that will dictate the result in every case so it's a matter of helplines six factors which in that case to determine whether or not we carry standing now mr herman is also attempting to raise the issue of whether or not the fact that there is a derivative issue and he uses a full load case from the third circuit at the turn of the century to bolster over the debtor at that time before the before the bankruptcy was a for profit corporation there would have been serious issues allocating the damage from the antitrust violation through to the shareholder who's actually suing in well while in this case real easy the money came out of the estate if the money didn't come out of the state as a result of the price fixing violation it would have gone to make gary they had virtual