established than in federal court a motion to return property is equitable in nature if you know you're denied the equitable relief of the return of the small quantity of marijuana for medical use of it been held for four years less than i would think that except for the problem of the whole commerce being illegal let's say it's a legal substance and that the court has to seize your new bottle of aspirin and death they have no excuse for it they've been told none of this to aspirin for four years so you move from returning a bottle aspirin and you're going to probably be denied the equitable relief because you can just go out and buy another bottle aspirin and for that matter you can bring an action for inverse condemnation and get compensated for your bottle of aspirin why would in the same thing apply the marijuana well the state court was the first court to get your sticks over this case and there is certainly tension between the courts when another court twice to step in on the jurisdiction i don't see where the in actually and that doesn't address my question that addresses this question of the rates but it seems to me that once the organ court has ordered the return of the marijuana to its owners it is no longer asserting the real concern i think is that the federal courts the federal government never did anything you order to inject themselves into the corporate state court proceedings with regard to this case maybe you could address now the question of mine that i asked you and you did not answer the one about why do you need equitable relief when you've got inverse condemnation available to get compensated for property that's been taken well because this is important is it and there is no this is important as for my clients important i once had a case where representative woman and boyfriend was a hit man and he thought he'd used her truck so they took her cross and after they'd had it six or eight months she said i need my truck just to get to work you know  if i move for a return of her truck it was really important she really needed her truck and that snow i think that if the state government had needed to do more tests on it or wanted it indefinitely they could have just except to the extent that it's contraband in the market it's criminal for there is no legitimate market for medical use of marijuana that would seem to justify not returning it because you can't return something if giving marijuana to somebody is a crime you can't very well order the court clerk to communicate well as i would argue later my brief the organ the people of oregon did pass the organ medical marijuana act and the state presidential ballot there's also the concurring opinion by jessica's kaczynski and the condit versus waters case we also indicates that there is quite frankly no connection between interstate commerce and the medical use of marijuana if you take a look at oregon statute there is no economic activity with the medical use of marijuana think we have a nice turkey cased that says that the congressional prohibition of possession of marijuana is to overturn federal law but there is no specific prohibition against medical marijuana under federal law if the feds take no marijuana no how no way for nothing and somebody says but what about medical marijuana can you talk about medical marijuana it seems to me they have i would argue that there is no congressional findings or not one nothing in the record that suggests that they have any specific findings with regard to the issue of medical marijuana and again i would argue that there isn't a that we were in view of the kind of balancing that in equitable determination involves with some deference and the church considered you haven't had this tiny amount of marijuana for four years now and  he considered all the equitable factors decided against your side equitably it seems to me that nor to test the issue of whether congress really can and really has prohibited and the sort of medical use of marijuana at issue here what you'd have to do is bring an inverse condemnation claim for the market value with the marijuana well it's that way you don't have any kind of balancing any kind of equitable issues in the supreme court has said and would rather know that there isn't any de minimus exception i think that's right in compensation for taking someone's medicine from them is  sufficient i would argue that the unconscionable for someone who has a serious medical condition for someone to come in and take medicine that a doctor said they need they think is necessary the medical if you had some medicine of mine that was prescribed four years ago and getting  really probably wouldn't be very important anymore i disagree with that because i think that if there's a precedent set that the federal government can see someone's medicine even if that medicine is very important to sustain their health or to quite frankly try to improve their health not harm is done at that moment and quite frankly the hard continues as long as they hold on to that medicine but it also has the press of the future that would allow the government to again see someone's medicine and i think that there are certain types of medicines that are quite important sometimes  decision to really do an end run around the state's court's jurisdiction and if you look at the general penitentiary case that really addresses this specific issue it's indicates that you know this is the court first assuming jurisdiction over the property is they really try to circumvent the process of the stake or through stiction rather than becoming involved in that process the whole fourteenth amendment the civil rights movement was all about why i think that the federal government should have intervened at some point in the state court proceedings or should have appealed to the united states supreme court they refused or failed to do either of those they instead tried to essentially ignore the orders of off three of the organ courts i did that did this issue the second reason why you shouldn't wait on the ration versus ask cross case for the united states supreme court is biased actually it's really dealt with the with the commerce clause and that case found that the california medical marijuana act didn't involve activities that rose level of interstate commerce organs law is far more restrictive in things how if one is law it really doesn't allow any type of act economic activity whatsoever it doesn't allow any type of transfer of controlled substances for consideration by any party who was involved and who was involved in the medical marijuana program there is absolutely no indications that there is any impact whatsoever on interstate commerce and because oregon's law is far more restrictive in california long enough points there there is a strong and important reason to rule that there is no interstate commerce in this case and therefore if the federal government's activity does that's being addressed here there weren't any issues with regard to mr karr with regard to growing marijuana or manufacturing or delivering marijuana there were certainly some suggestions that out but mr carter was never prosecuted even under state or federal law for th right you know it's not well i think that i would have to speculate here but i think that there still medical value to the marijuana that was seized it may be just minutes just like other people such as other prescriptions there's usually an expiration date it doesn't mean that they're necessarily not affected after that date but i think it is a suggestion that they do lose effectiveness over time but i think the concern is that if it's ok for the government to hold on to this medicine for four years i don't think that means that's ok for that initially se ok not ok is a different distinction from an it's a matter of vacuity it must be returned or as a matter of equity it need not be returned but i would argue that as a matter of equity given the organ court decisions given the fact that this is medicine that my client's doctors indicate is very important for his health up there are a lot of acol reasons that this should be returned to him and there is a state law and quite frankly a lack of a federal law to justify that return suppose it was medicine when i give prescription medicine it usually says it usually has a deadline on it and so if it was four years old i couldn't very well tell the court i needed for my health because it says right on the bottle i'm not allowed to take it anymore from a health well i think that that certainly does apply to certain types of prescriptions whether there is no i would argue that there certainly isn't any evidence that marijuana that's four years old has no value i think that it still retains some vessel value and so i think it's still important that my client fielder to have that property but again my concern i someone's medicine for whatever reasons they choose it has a substantial impact on anyone who relies on their prescription medication if they're someone who needs medication or to live on a daily basis and the police decide to seize it for whatever reason the should never been issued because of the jurisdiction question but if you if you if the district court doesn't have any equitable jurisdiction to return to you then you're not dealing with a real case or controversy just becomes an abstract proposition because there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow it's just an then marijuana was turned over that he was seized by the way so what happens if you went on the shouldn't have issued a search warrant in the first place assuming when you started the proposition that there's no i could well jurisdiction of the no appeal on the over out that's exactly what the ruling was and you didn't appeal and well i think that there are there is authority and if there is for you under state law to do so and i think there's a lack of authority under federal law to prevent that from happening of your discretion in declining to exercise equitable jurisdiction and mr comma has waived that issue on appeal as the court has noted and as we noted in our right brief he does not generally challenge the district court determination that it lacked equitable jurisdiction to entertain the motion for attorney property nor does he specifically challenge any of the four factors outlined by this court in rammstein he says nevertheless you can attack the validity of the i in the search warrant the first place for what purpose i'm not sure i don't believe that's the case your honor if i think the judge struck it you formulated the question of the issue entirely correctly if the district court does not have equitable jurisdiction to entertain the motion for return of property then it does not have equitable jurisdiction to consider any of the merits arguments about why the marijuana should or should not be returned in fact all of the arguments which mr connor raises in his phrase go to the merits of whether or not the marijuana should be returned they don't deal with the threshold question of whether this court has equitable jurisdiction a good analogy is there oftentimes questions for example about whether n but it left open the question whether that would be relevant to the callous disregard which is the first element of the four ramsden factors and since that time the district court in this case and  court in this order stay in the warm one with the marijuana the marijuana at that time was with the portland police bureau which was one of the the portland police bureau oh well the question that there are several federal statutes that include state and local governments within the definition of person i haven't had the occasion to look at how the controlled substances act defines that when i read the  property division contraband section of the court  i think it's a bit it says that approximately two point four nine grams of marijuana confiscated from samuel comma in july january twenty eighth one thousand nine hundred nine and currently in the possession of the portland oregon police bureau eleven thirty two southwest seventeen th