didn't you in may please the court joel always say on behalf of the geo group i'd like to reserve five minutes of my time for republic but i may your honors the confidential financial information sought by the state in this case has no relevance to any recognize theory of unjust enrichment under washington law just as in hartley sanderson lombardi mandamus relief is justified here to prevent the compelled disclosure of confidential sensitive but irrelevant information the district court discovery orders below are clearly erroneous as a matter of law and therefore satisfy the rd factor for mandamus relief if your client can see that washington's minimum wage law applies to no your honor and that is  the subject of proceedings in the district court currently we have the cart before the horse and so i'm not sure i understand your honor well you're asking us to control discovery in the case case that resolves around revolves around whether this minimum wage law applies to your clients in operating these privately held tension facilities and that and as i understand your response you  well you are there are two separate claims below there's the minimum wage claim and there is the un just in richmond claim the discovery sought by the state here only goes to the unjust enrichment claim they have not said and they don't argue that it's relevant to the minimum wage claim and so  we're trying to ensure that the confidential financial information is not disclosed as to the unjust enrichment claims and that's the only claim without could actually has it been determined that only the market value of services and not profits and some other measure are the actual measure for unjust enrichment your honor what we're arguing is that the reasonable value of services is the only proper remedy under washington law i have the states hasn't been determined what is the precise range of remedies under unjust enrichment in your case the dollar amounts your honor you know the principles under which they can be determined and i believe them not being clear but it's just the same question that judge hawkins asked but as applied to unjust enrichment has there been a court determination as to what the measurements would be available for determining unjust enrichment iran is under washington law our argument is that only the reasonable value of services would be the proper remedy and the way to measure that would be the market value of those services but i know the court hasn't said i am going to only look at markets just the district court your honor this court said in hartley that there are necessary and ultimate limitations on the discovery of information based on relevance and this case is very much like hartley in that sense our point is that there must be  the discovery stage as to what can be disclosed to the state let me tell you exactly where i'm coming from thank you if there have been determined that the minimum wage laws of the state of washington apply to your client's business then i could perfectly understand your argument that why are we talking about anything other than the difference between a what we pay the detainee's when they choose to work and b what washington minimum wage law requires that's where i'm coming from if we were there on that i would have some sympathy with your argument about this coverage but your honor even as to the unjust enrichment claim the state still has to show that the information it is seeking is relevant to the remedy and to liability for unjust enrichment on that claim is considered i don't because it doesn't claim that any of that is relevant to what minimum wage what evidence what what requests for discovery are you specifically objecting to the there are seven requests they're listed at eighty nine through  disagree and i think that the unjust enrichment claim in washington law put forward by the state both misconceived the liability question and the remedy question the washington law and therefore the information they requested is relevant on both counts as  liability the proper question of liability for un just in richmond under washington law is whether the state as the plaintiff in this case conferred a benefit on the geo group and as to the back question there is no dispute between the parties that the confidential information the one who conferred the benefit on the defendant it specifically rejected the argument that the plaintive can recover for a benefit ostensibly conferred on the defendant by someone else it's like that's what the state secrets are interrupt you did your client move for partial summary judgment on the unjust enrichment not but not before these discovery request we had moved to dismiss the unjust enrichment claim offering the very argument that i just put forward the liability argument didn't move for summary judgment denied and the motion is based on the theory you may be right filing a mandamus is isn't that just a backward or roundabout way to get back to what the motion to dismiss already denied you know your honor what we're asking for in terms of rule of relief is simply the baker of the discourse discovery orders now because the state contends that the discovery it seeks is relevant to liability because it has put that in issue that necessarily requires this court to compare what is the theory of liability of unjust enrichment recognized under washington law and how does that compare to the discovery they're seeking well i don't think i quite have your answer as tied to the motion to dismiss your motion to dismiss has been denied correct yes on and that's based on the theory of liability or theory of unjust enrichment correct that's correct if you think certification on that no your honor we do not seek certification on the motion to dismiss  if it is i don't know if the court was right or wrong on that we're not making a judgment but the court denies a motion to dismiss based on a legal principle but now you're asking us in effect to decide the legal principle in advance to limit discovery which is even further afield because we're here on a motion to dismiss we'd be here on the noble review but we're here on baumann where on discovery discovery tends to be discretionary so i'm kind of seeing i understand why you've made your request but i just see these two procedural aspects kind of colliding and if we were to rule in your favor we've just done an enron about around the motion  and your honor again to respond to that point we would not be arguing this the question of how to properly determine liability for unjust enrichment under washington law if the state were not here asserting that the discovery is requesting is relevant to liability that is what's put this in issue were we didn't come come to this court on a petition of mandamus trying and run around the motion to dismiss it only because the state is putting forward liability as the basis as one of the bases for the discovery that we now are in a position of arguing we conferred on the on the cio by the detainees who by the way are seeking their own monetary relief in their own separate lawsuit below and most extraordinary of all your honors the state has made clear that it doesn't believe it is the representative of these detainees and does not have any obligation to share any monetary recovery with the detainees opening the way to a double recovery the split so right now what's happening in the district court right now the district court very recently ordered a summary judgment briefing based on a statement of interest submitted by the united states department of justice last week and asserting intergovernmental immunity on behalf of geo because in the words of the form of justice this is an aggressive lawsuit attempting to flout the federal government's ability to enforce immigration law and that goes to the ordinary i'm sorry you are not here to argue the merits of the government's intervention but is other discovery proceeding in this case you know there's one remaining deposition your honor the deadline basically all of this is up and coming up state's theory of unjust enrichment on liability and what washington long recognizes as liability for unjust enrichment because washington law is squarely focused on compensating the individual the plaintiffs who ostensibly confer the benefit on the defendant not  makes this protective order insufficient protection the the lift case from the washington supreme court squarely held in circumstances very analogous to these your honor that where trade secrets are turned over to a state agency pursu  to a confidentiality order even within the terms of the me within the confines of a mediation that trade secret is nonetheless mandatorily disclose into the public records act for washington state unless the objecting party can show irreparable harm and they would be clearly contrary to the public interest so your honor if we were to turn over our trade secrets the state in short order we would find ourselves in washington state court with the burden of showing why those treats you could should not be made public and that is enough of a harm to justify  and as i've already covered liability your honour's as to why they're what they're asking for is not relevant to one billion dollar washington law i like to quickly touch on the remedy portion and just make the point that the washing supreme court in curses king county this court in metro phone versus global crossing the restatement of restitution and the model dreams directions all point in the same direction where the benefit conferred is in the form of services to a business the proper remedy under washington law is the reasonable value of those services discordant a profit is only permitted where there is proof of conscious wrongdoing on the part of the defendant there is no such allegation here nor could there be since the state doesn't dispute that g a o is authorized by the federal government to pay one dollar a day to the detainee so you're left with the resolve of services being the remedy and the state does not dispute that as to that remedy the confidential information it seeks is irrelevant now the state cites the young case but the young case has nothing to do with the swordsmen a profit has to do with the reasonable value of improvements to land which is a completely different remedy under washington law and just to highlight that they're not seeking the value that the state is not coming forward and saying that the detainees improve the value of the land on which the northwest detention center good morning your honors please the court i'm representing the state of washington as our supreme court has noted issuing a writ of mandamus against a judge is a drastic remedy and is appropriate only in extraordinary circumstances none of which exist here g o does not meet four of the five bauman factors needed to justify mandamus of the routine discovery order before the court and my argument will focus primarily on the st two the trial court did not make a clear error of law in its discovery ruling compelling production of gio's financial documents because that information is relevant to washington's unjust enrichment claim both liability and remedies and we are talking about reteam financial records such as the northwest detention center budgets and financial reports that contain both labor and overtime expenses as well as a financial performance analyses financial models other financial valuations for the purpose of geo group's offers and bids yes from two thousand and five to the present that's what seems to me to be beyond it's different from anything else on the list that the district addressed and it does seem to go to that one of the questions that that geo focused on which was that the exposure of this stuff is disclosure to their competitors in future bids and whether it's in washington or someplace else you may drive drive them out of the state but it is relevant to their to their financial to their ability to bid on other projects elsewhere so why is that critical to your to your case your honor the underlying the underlying model of how gio has designed its operations includes leveraging relatively few paid geo staff to supervise a relatively large number of detainee workers who are paid a dollar a day it is when issuing the discovery we sought both the basic information as you've identified about their budgets and other things that you're finding on concerning but also the underlying bids and information about how they came up with their per d m fully burdened rate which is how they get paid in this case in order to follow the money and how they profit from the detainee labor which is part of what we are attempting to show the financial benefit to g o of this work we need to understand how it is that they get paid and it's in those goods your remedy your remedy is that you're seeking  profits is that correct so your honor i'm going to young the young there are two alternative remedies for ault for unjust enrichment and we are seeking to put to discover evidence and put forth evidence of both of them and that is what ok so the st is what is effectively the fair market value of the labor ok what would have to pay someone else in order to do that what they would have had to pay to come workers to do that the  is what is the full benefit or advantage to the defendant from having engaged having had the benefit different from profits in this case your honor because i have the washington law in light of the washington law in light that this is a for profit corporation where we're seeking monetary monetary award profits is inherently part of that analysis we are entitled to see how it is that they have  provide any notice to g o of any kind of requests for records and we would certainly do that we would never release these records absent theirs and that you know i'm just asking you if there's a request yes because now this is all public they might an exemption i wanted to try to address your question directly there is a public records act controversy exemption which addresses specifically the situation where records are relevant as they are here to a controversy the agencies involved in but if they were developed in discovery they're not part of a public they're not considered public records so while that issue while i cannot say that issue may not have to be litigated in the future and i pretty familiar with the protective order takes care of it you have a different situation so why shouldn't that figure into the calculus well your honor i would say that here we do have the controversy exemption and with due respect we believe that applies and i would  from public disclosure i would also address that is the representation you're making to the court that these documents would not be turned over under the under request of the p r a your honor the state is required to follow the public records act and if a court were to order them to be turned over as you know we would need to comply with it and take a position as still as to whether the documents can be can be turned over or not correct in our position to be that the controversy exemption applies it's very important for us to be able to engage our are ex from from release under the p under washington's p r i that's our agencies yes that would be our that's our position yes indeed i also want to say that in terms of the harm g a o has claimed that they would have harmed simply by turning over these records but in fact they've already turned over records in some respects in each of the categories of the court's order and to your point they have specifically turned over the bid that gave rise to the two thousand and fifteen contract with ice so to the extent jim is claiming they cannot i'm ringing a bell once it's wrong that bell has been rung and has no harm has come to g a o and no harm will come to jail but that that information could be returned if we thought that it was inappropriate it could be returned to geo and then the would you would have that have to confront the controversy over a question p r a theoretically that's possible it has also already been integrated into positions in expert reports both ours and there's part of that's part of your record on review you know on and this is a this is a case where not only would there not be harm to geo in exposing this but washington needs these records in order to pursue both its liability and its remedies at trial for context i do want to answer some of the issues that the court was asking about we have indeed faced dispositive motions and cross motions for summary judgment move to dismiss the unjust enrichment order denying and the court or entered an order denying that motion and that  that order is e c f to eighty eight we have already dealt dealt with the issues of parents patry in our authority as the state of washington to bring this law enforcement claim and what's important here is that the unjust enrichment claim insurance to keep insurers the jew does not keep the benefit or the windfall of its past and fair labor practices for having run all of its non security functions on the back of detainee labor laborers while paying them only a dollar a day this is our backward looking claim as part of our law enforcement we also have a forward looking claim the injunctive relief on the minimum wage act but both claims are necessary to enforce our laws and right now all this before this court is a simple discovery order the trial judge has not yet heard any evidence has not instructed a jury has not determine what the proper unjust enrichment remedy is reference that made parts of these were motions for summary judgment did the geo group asked the court to rule on the scope of unjust enrichment liability and remedies you honor that specific issue has been touched on the court has not basically denied the motion for summary judgment so the court has not entered a substantive analysis of the long aisle correct ok state of washington routinely you seek to enforce its minimum wage law by seeking damages for us in richmond your honor it's a routine enforcement is usually done by the department of labor and industries and there's a there's an administrative framework for doing that what happens is though at times the attorney general's office will enforce the state laws and will do so in a way that looks at those cases that have a broader impact or impact a lot of people is the answer to my question yes or no i'm not aware of other cases that our attorney general's office has brought specifically seeking unjust enrichment in minimum wage act or in a fair wage claim detention center not to detention centers necessarily or but it does for employers who may seek to avoid paying a fair wage to their workers what else would that be any employer that is involved in employing or allowing people to work in the state is required to follow our minimum wage laws unless there are specific statutory exemptions number by the department by the section of labor and so we have two parts of our enforcement mechanism in the state we have routine enforcement that happens through the department of labor and industries but of course the attorney general's office brings a wide range of ferment of litigation where there are statutory by a way sions or other violations of washington's common law what matters is that people are being harmed people who are working in the detention center people who are unemployed in the home area who otherwise would have received those johns and our economy frankly because what we do in washington is to ensure that all employers have the right to equal competition by paying following similar laws one of the players in her actual facility exemption in washington for this year on there are washington state law exempts certain certain institutions that are state or county run r ok we don't have an exemption for private contractors who run detention facilities that's why this is unusual but my question is is that there is an exemption for the state run facilities that we would normally call correctional facilities correct correct but there is no exemption for privately run facilities correct your honor and you know our point is that in order to enforce the important laws that we have regarding our economy and workers rights in this state it is important to look at places where for profit corporations may be taking advantage of people and that is our assertion of what's happening here trial we are faced with having to put on evidence of our remedies and we are pursuing both as a fair market value as well as the profit discouragement and i'll tell you why it's particularly sensitive because the fair market value in this case is not readily ascertainable jim has failed to maintain any records of the actual hours worked by detainees from two thousand and five to the present so in order for us to put on evidence a fair market value we're missing that essential component of the equation right that and social number so we have had to engage in broad discovery to disk to disk to both look at what they have kept records of which is how many work details how many days of work their work is they use that for billing purposes but we've also had to build on how many jobs there are what the shifts are or numbers of hours worked each day in order to build and estimate based on the best evidence that we have of the hours worked so while we will put that evidence before the court and while we would be very happy to receive an offer to fairly compensate workers it may never be that we can prove that at trial because joe is also taking shots at that evidence so like an air serv where the defendant failed to produce the financial records and there were unique services they were unable to prove fair market value and they needed to go to the unjust enrichment measure of damages which was the discouragement of prop that we are in a similar situation where we may be able to prove the fair market value and we will try and we will be grateful when the court accepts one or both of them and decides sitting in its place of equity which of those is fair between the parties this is the piece that i think is really important to recognize which is we have pled unjust enrichment we have are taking the direction from our state supreme court both as to what the liability is which shows we have to prove that there is a benefit and g a o is denying that it receives any benefit from the labor of detainees in any respect when they're doing the cleaning or the food preparation for over one thousand five hundred detainees a day it's our obligation to show the benefit both for liability purposes and then when we get to remedies into the fair market value or what percentage of the profits is fairly attributable to that labor here we see simply the discovery necessary in order to prove those points in your honor thank you very much at times thank you your honour's three quick points on rebuttal st the state cites the controversy exemption under the public records act there is a case that squarely addresses that in the washington court of appeals called department of transportation versus mendoza to sugiyama that's at one  and eighty eight dollars and it says that even where there's a protective order in place the public records act overcomes that protective order and requires disclosure notwithstanding the exemption cited by the state so that is not protection and off nd as to parents patriae that the state comes up here and says of course we can rely on the injury that occurred to the detainees to assert our unjust enrichment claim where we're pursuing this as parents patriae that is directly contrary to supreme court the supreme court's holding in hawaii versus standard oil your honour's that's a four o five discovery your honor again this is this goes to the question of liability but you but you also had an opportunity to seek certification of some portion of the judge's ruling on the motion to dismiss that it seems a little back door here to come and try and get at the parents patri i ruling without without seeking certification on you and you doing it under the under the guise of a mandate and your honor again i respectfully disagree because we would even be making this argument if the state were not claiming that this evidence is relevant to liability it's only because of that that i am here saying that the court needs to determine what the proper theory of liability is under washington law in order to determine whether it is that you might have some certification of some portion of all or some portion of the motion to dismiss you that that's that that the information it seeks is irrelevant so it's relevant to liability the final point i'd like to make here your honour's i know i'm reaching in my time i just asked the courts indulgence find a little bit over since the state did as well thank you your honor the state says that this is just a routine discovery dispute but your honour's in hartley this court was faced with a very similar situation the compelled disclosure of trade secrets and the court said even to an ordinary discovery dispute where the circumstances are extraordinary enough  mandamus relief is appropriate here your honor the circumstances are extraordinary the state seeks to impose a massive financial liability on an agent of the federal government based on an unprecedented theory of unjust enrichment is such an extraordinary situation and th bombing factors are met here mandamus relief is justified and therefore i would ask the court respectfully to grant the petition thank you nothing if the court makes a determination on the government's intervention and makes a substantive determination nothing would prevent you from justice that would lead to dismissal of the minimum wage claim at least but not unjust enrichment and that is really the focus of most of these of these yes exactly so this is going to be relevant a matter what happens with the statement of interest that the department of justice