verified complaint in the circuit court of cook county's law division the defendant mr frawley remove the case to federal court shortly after removal the case they missed mr fawley also filed a motion to dismiss the court conducted some discovery with respect to a motion for remand that was filed by my clients mr weber mr beaver your court to look to discovery i do it with court order discovery i think i misspoke i apologize and the issues that are presented to the court are essentially the denial of the motion to remand and then the order to compel arbitration and to state a litigation based upon a what purports to be an arbitration agreement i'm going to start with the jurisdictional questions as presented in the first question is whether or not the court erred in finding that the romance was improper based upon what we believe as a notice of removal that did not comply with twenty eight u fourteen forty six and the issue there is that the complaint as filed in the circuit court of cook county did not contain a specific prepared prayer for relief rather contained a sort of general allegation of damages based affidavit which sets forth whether or not the plaintiffs are seeking more or less than fifty thousand dollars and so all our issue is that at the point that the case was removed and at the time the case was removed the only issues that were presented were an allegation a repeat of the allegations of the prayers for leith and based upon that what will say an allegation or a prayer for relief it was insufficient to meet the requirements of fourteen forty six and in fact fourteen forty six specifically address those circumstances when the specific being very have struck back to make this more fact based and when let's put it this way ok you wouldn't stipulate that you were seeking that each of the plaintiffs was seeking less than seventy five thousand eggs and under those circumstances you looks like you're just playing games with one of the jurisdictional questions no i think the question then is whether or not the defendant moving forward has an obligation beyond simply stating it's worth this much based on the periphery from the notes of removal doesn't notice removal require more than simply repeating my address the question of what's in the notice of removal this notice was fished question is whether there's any factual basis that's why the district judge allowed the discovery and when you all refused to stipulate that the amount in controversy was less than seventy five thousand dollars that's a pretty compelling indication that you're actually seeking more and you're just playing games i think our argument is that the notice of not i understand that your argument yes but the demands for the notice itself on this particular issue are not if you raise an issue about it then the parties can litigate the issue of the amount of controversy has happened here i don't disagree with that i think our issue is primarily with the with the knowledge of removal itself to the extent that it states nothing about the amount and kind of mercy of an aggregation of the claims which are security jurisdictional amount and the question then is whether or not that's appropriate the notice of removal do they have to do more as required under the statute which is a plain and concise statement of facts and the grounds for the basis of the removal and it's our position that the notice of removal did not contain the grounds for removal and therefore it was for removal or diversity of citizenship and more than seventy five thousand dollars in controversy and then indeed if the plaintiff says nothing in response then there is more than seventy five thousand dollars in controversy and you charge ahead in federal court you make an issue of it but then you refused to stipulate perhaps it might be more useful if you talked about some of the arbitration issues yeah i think i will die my only point was we believe that they did meet the threshold burden of getting to the next step of do conducting no not advocating claims of both of them each count is alleged to seek innit amount in excess of fifty thousand dollars but we believe that as alleged and as written in the brief a low that those are essentially two hundred thousand are a claim and you're saying what the two cancer danica were saying that they did the damages claim to the same under two different theories of recovery don't they cover different losses over different periods of time we don't somes during their employment with jefferies and some for lost opportunities after they were fired i think that they cover i think that they cover the question was lost commissions i think the commissions are for the did the period of time when they were working mistaken why didn't you just stipulate to less than seventy five thousand damages because as we set forth we don't know what the one of the issues that we had is we don't know what the circumstances were with the terminations of the other ploys they're in the same situation as your play each one of these guys would have made more than seventy five thousand dollars in four five six months right definite geoffrey's well i think any one of them would have i don't know that both of them with they i think we stipulated that one of them was making ten thousand dollars per month and i don't remember the exact figure of mr webb it was less than that or ten thousand dollars per week i think i got no it wasn't that much but i was about t our argument with respect to those issues are whether or not there exists an agreement tarver trade and the bulk of this argument and both of this finding in the court was that these both of these people were subject to the federal rules with a trial by jury and have to be outside the finner arbitration because the language of the you for form is limited in such that it suggests that it has to do with members and associate persons and it may be with regard to disciplinary actions and i think recognized that and adopted twenty two sixty three to come into compliance and there's been no evidence in the record to establish that there's any contract that's been present to the court that establishes an arbitration agreement there's a form you for that was put there but i don't did you raise this with the district court we did grace the district court where we raised it add the in our service to serve apply to the response to the motion for dismissal and i believe it said brief i'm looking for the your and i don't you know there is a reference twenty two sixty three but it was in the record below and has not been argued to us at all until a moment ago so i don't know i was a basis for getting mr beaver's or felt from under what agreement mr webb signed here if if mr weber mr beaver's door of turn out not to be similarly situated would your side want to have a separate litigation and arbitration for the two point  i think we'd be we'd have to because mr webb is separate and apart from mr beaver story and he has a separate set of rights and he's indicated that he wants to have a separate trial in a in a court of law as opposed to in fairness so yes does it make any is it that he would like he would he want an arbitration where does well i don't think i think it was mr beaver store choice he would rely upon twenty two sixty three and say that he hasn't waived his right explicitly with respect to the i don't know why why d did the two of them split in this way because mr beaver stork did execute you for at some point when he became why did because webb is not a registered representative and he never took the securities licensing requirements that are for didn't because it was never presented to him and i didn't think he was he wired data well he wasn't required to do that says yes i know i'm asking why he didn't do because it was never presented to him that doesn't make any sense not sign it because he gets it it's a part of the requirements of becoming licensed under the various series as securities dealers and brokers and he did not take that examination so that wasn't presented to him as part of a package when you take that examination that you mean he couldn't have asked for arbitration i suppose he could have when you suppose he could have he could have asked for arbitration if you agreed to do arbitration but he didn't do that jefferies with respect to the issues the presented in the jeffries litigation which has been dismissed and it's and it's over with well what exactly do you want your clients i mean you do represent both of them i do  so what do you want for them i would like them to have the opportunity to have their disputes with mr prolly be heard in a court of law and i think under what i thought when i thought i thought the restore force committed arbitration thousand and thirteen of two traders who work for jeffries a large securities firm therefore complaint is that they were terminated from jefferies when their supervisor mr crawley instructed them doing gaijin transactions that jeffries did not support in two thousand and thirteen shortly after they were terminated they brought the finra arbitration against jefferies but they didn't name mr frawley when they initiated the fender arbitration they said they signed a contract with been recalled the submission agreement and the submission agreement they agreed to submit their employment controversy with jefferies and all related third party claims to pinera do we have that agreement in the record your honor if you do it is and we use your contention that the finra submission agreement is now the operative agreement by both  it's the employment agreement that mr webb signed with jefferies along with the submission agreement that they submitted the claim mr webster minute his claim to fame because he had an arbitration provision in his employment matters related to your employment or this agreement shall be brought before a federal right any arbitration shall be brought be that's why it's a venue provision but it doesn't say we will arbitrate any dispute have to prove it didn't you're trying to compel arbitration you've got to you've got his signature on a piece of paper that says if we are betrayed anything will do it in new york that's not an exclusive that's not a commitment to arbitrate ok now you're telling us that you think finra rules apply this to anybody who's an employee in their employment disputes without having actually agreed to arbitration ok and without a you for for him and i hope circle back at some point to the submission agreement which sounds like a an entirely new theory it's not an enforced arbitration based only on thirteen two hundred against people who have not signed agreements that require them to arbitra say well the uniform is just confirmation no big deal now to make up your mind what i'm saying that the rules require associated persons to arbitrate and that the employment agreement side by good will that you for doing parties are permitted to bring such action in a state or federal court traders who work for jeffries are not permitted to bring such action in the state or federal court because they agreed by working with a friend remember him by the employment agreement it said that any proceeding in any arbitration proceeding brought with respect to matters relating to your employment shall be for opting for finra and that's actually only one example of something whe to have something to do with their work is fine doesn't have to though i mean what if he was fired for you know soliciting sex from a secretary would that require arbitration that might not relate to the business activities of a family member has defined in the rules but certainly what happened the allegations here do relate to the business activities that miss traders and whether they were directed by mr not to execute the trades that that is the issue in both the arbitration before finra with jefferies and the issue in the state for complaint they brought here and the problem with splitting letting them arbitra have one may be subject to jurisdiction in one place and not in another you can sue them in different suits it's still think it's an inefficient and wouldn't well look for this fight over form shopping here is pretty inefficient aren't worth the risk that you all of us met an amazing amount of time and energy and deciding just where this dispute is going to be held and you could conceivably wind up getting to one for  webb and i ask you to go back to this publicly available confidential document in the submission agreement with finra it's not in our record now did you did you argue that as a basis for arbitration before the district court i believe we did mention that the pension agreement because it's not sick or but it came in fairly late we weren't aware of it because you've seen it now correct yeah ok does it that the and this is signed by both mr webb and mr peepers or the undersigned parties here by submit the present matter in controversy as set forth in the attached statement of claim answers and all related cross claims counterclaims and or third party claims which may be asserted to arbitration in accordance with the finra bylaws rules and code of arbitration procedure what we believe your honors the third party claim against i would assume that there would be instructions back to the district court that there were no claim against the website when i win the fall out of the district court because the minimum amount of controversy requirement was not satisfied when himself i believe so he also had to tort claims of fraud tortious interference and he made two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and he's seeking lost salary as well and in any event the amount in controversy between the two plaintiffs cannot be educated  greater than a few months exceed seventy five thousand dollars then there's a fraud claim and the fraud claim we believe increases the stakes of litigation because they are seeking commissions that they would have earned had first point i want to make is that the discussion of the submission agreement all the different dispute and it was not argued in the trial court and it's not part of the record and so i don't think it's dispositive of the issues anyway but the other issue i wanted for securities industry registration or transfer and so because he never applied for securities registration or transfer that's why he never executed you for and so only if he had actually applied what he execute you for and he didn't do that and that's reason why he did it because the language of about arbitration which i might add is much more limited in you for than it is in the twenty to sixty three is contained as part of the application process when you submit