please the court good afternoon your honors my name is william palmer and my colleague daniel culhane and i represent the plaintiffs and collins section at the outset we wish to reserve time to respond approximately ten minutes possible think about why being able to look on the internet isn't good enough yes your honor from a constitutional foundation standpoint there is no authority authorizes a website as notice it ignores the fact that not every citizen has access to the internet or the capabilities to access a website it ignores the structural deficiencies of the website itself which do not which does not always work especially when it has seven million names and at but most important it is notice after the fact in the words of maleng it is a gesture of notice a a statement of notice that follows the destruction of property the only time the property is listed on the website is after it's already been destroyed or sold sold the only thing that the property owner can gain from that website is information regarding the prior sale of the property those are the deficiencies in a website of the names are listed there till after the controller has taken the stock and sold it that's correct your hon or and it doesn't just apply to stock it applies to all forms of property so for example if you had valuable papers in a web and a safety deposit box that had no value only value to you that's why you have them in the safety deposit box there would be no listing of those papers on the website because they could not be sold or you mean the controller might go to your bank where you've had a stay deposit box he had used for a few years and empty it out and take it and then there'd be nothing on the website that's correct there would be no listing for example the hypothetical the hypothetical bank box that had your marriage certificate in it important documents that you needed to run your life those have no objective sale value the only thing that would be taken from that from that safety deposit box would be articles of personal property that could be sold dormancy period i believe on safety deposit boxes is only three years so you have to admit paying is around for three years yes or like in the case of jones versus flowers nicknack like to pay his taxes for a couple of years continue your honor the court costs to put constitutional principles we're here to discuss today are the rights to be secure in one's property without interference with those property rights by the government and the right to notice and due process statute itself always required express notice and there you know that that's not what i was asking about really and it's kind of nice if we can say your sister circuits have looked at an new state statutes in tennessee in alabama and for a month in north dakota and said that and they have to give notice that's a whole lot better than california gave that sort of  california it's a understand that you don't really need this to lift california statute to be unconstitutional to win this case all you need is for california to be ordered to follow it is there any well the problem is the problem that we have now within the county where they reside or gone through you need to see that the new statute is unconstitutional yes you are because if you read the statute and you read the declaration of the state official placed in front of you it says that what they are providing is only these block assets that say we hold on claim property and there are only publishing had and and terms of mass circulation in order to save money so for example in california they publish it hand the l a times even if the person resides in the northern part of the state and would never see that publication notice and the publication notice of self is utterly devoid of details it simply says we hold  but they only they allowed direct mail notice to the owner if the avarice is different or if there's a social security number that allows them to check the known owner's address against the tax records of the franchise tax board i believe in the opposition green bay said that they mailed out one hundred fifteen direct mail notices within the last few years but they're seven point six million accounts so they only bail out direct mail notice if they have a social content requirements of the old statute passed that's the current statute that we're discussing now the statute is changed over the years from one that was constitutional had been followed to one that now provides a very generalized form of notice with only a block as for publication notice and only the direct mail in certain instances the requirement of checking the franchise tax board which is another thing that the state official could do that's another fact discussed in john's words it's flowered that extra step because it's the senekal form of government where we're taking property alleging that someone is lost in unknown with the left hand  auditor's into these companies who then survey the property to take the property and that interferes with the relationship between the holder in this case a corporation and in the second place the stock owners see that i'm coming up on my ten minutes i'd like to reserve as much time as possible but i want to address all of your questions i have a question can you hear me yes your honor how in terms of perspective relief establish an actual case controversy in this case mr lyons or just lyons would not i would have had not only to allege that he would have another encounter with the police but also to make the incredible search an either one that all police officers in los angeles always choke any citizen with whom they happened to have an encounter whether for purposes of arrest issuing a citation or questioning or two that the city ordered or authorized police officers to act in such manner question judge hawkins there are at least two ways in which to demonstrate that such entries likely to recur first a plaintiff may show that the defendant had at the time of the injury a written policy and that the injuries stems from that policy my clients have been injured by this policy it is a written policy it continues into the future the opposition the brief that we saw in opposition doesn't make any bones about it that that that this is the policy the state of california second reading from the armstrong decision the plaintiff may demonstrate that the harm is part of a pattern of officially sanctioned behavior violative of the plaintiff's federal rights siding with duke i could just  there's a sufficient possibility that they will engage in them in the near future to satisfy the quote realistic repetition requirements in this regard where the plaintiffs constitute a certified class it is not irrelevant that the name plaintiffs seek to represent a response your honor what i didn't hear or didn't understand your question to judge klinefelter's question which as i understood it was do you need to the difference yes i do the problem is that i face in this case is that for roughly a ten year period we have all the internal records and and information from the controllers office itself that shows they made  not to follow the mandatory notice requirements but then they amend the laws and they shift into this unconstitutional form so i perhaps could get a prospect of redress involving the return of property and deficient but that's what we follow it and that was then and i was part of the lower court's ruling as well in fact the lower court suggested that if we want to remedy the constitutional harm we should try to go to the legislature and get them to pass  constitutional law so that's the we do need to address the current form of the statute i'd like to reserve ok i think you thank you your honor thank you i want to know what rule regulation process or procedure has been put in place by the comptroller to comply with mine yes your honor we comply with small lane by not federal constitutional law yes and that i can't make any sense of your response through the website especially since jones versus flowers reaffirm and like a lot of people who paid off their mortgage and have the bank they their property taxes form all those years he didn't pay attention and the property taxes went unpaid the county  that a reasonable person would think likely to reach the individual it was plain to the counties that the certified mail did not reach him among the things they might have done is tried regular mail since that doesn't have to be picked up at the post office within two weeks and you don't need somebody owns to sign it but they didn't say it most so in the ordinary mail they just didn't say that at all well your honor if i may the c with the first attempt which is by the holder something that will do you mean the company the company the company has an obligation under the law to send direct mail notice to the individual once that happens if the holder does not get a return from the individual then the holder reports the property to the controller and sends it to the controller with the last known address but then if the holder hasn't the social security number that seems irrelevant i'm sorry reasons what you've just said seems irrelevant for two reasons first of all the supreme court describes the question is whether the due process requires the government to take additional reasonable steps to notify a property owner and second it looks as though foreigners should not own property that has any relationship to the state of california because if there's no social security number they don't get notice and foreigners are not part of the american social security system so rich people in england who invest in california and that money's gone to ground zero if they don't keep it churning your honor if in fact they have not received the notice from their holder at the old address holder the and a lot of my stocks don't pay dividends and i never bother with proxies because i don't know or care and you're perfectly safe if you're out or for if any of my property has a california nexus it's gone no  party is just transferring the property to the government sold in trust for the owner currently the government is the entity taking the property from the owner after after the corporation has said we don't know where this person is we have tried to contact him or her we have sent out direct mail notice as required by adjudication under the taking spliced as the fair market value of the property that you're required to pay the interest the court gives notice to the person who's in this litigation or do you just sell and use the money for general purposes and california certainly hope not and so we have problems with prisons in california reported special masters to going to get a few things straight now so prisoners were suffering from constitutional agitation do you think that the controller needs a special offices i believe well only be on for six months you can read and i don't know that you're on i'm sorry but in fact we have here property with addresses that are three and a half years old minimum so the question is what is the state required to do in that situation and we respectfully submit that what we do is more than one lane and jones requires do not mail a letter through those addresses right now because it would be a futile action on our youth like assume it would be but you don't know that because you didn't do it right correct i mean when you published a notice you did not put their names in the newspaper mr taylor had it at intel had a tailor from this had an address for mr taylor in belgium in fact the legend in constitution doesn't make it incumbent on the property owner to give the government notice or the or the property owner to give the company notice it makes it incumbent on the taker property to give the owner property notice to the best of its ability and when you look at andersen versus like it or the other you didn't do that either right correct your honor because mr record company do that it was doing a few thousand people for delinquent bills just put in a little boy in the paper saying they were suing a bunch of people for delinquent bills and we assume they probably moved out of their dresses because usually people with only collector bills or people have moved away and were not listing their names but if you're serious about whether we're suing you you can look on the electric company's website is that good or bad under my wing versus hanover it's bad because it's a judgment it's a final judgment your honor that these people would be subject to here we have  the retirement mistaken she had the stock certificates intercity deposit box if she had taken him out and gone to her stockbroker and said selim i think t w a is going to go bankrupt get rid of my stock for me and she had done that a marriage certificate well will they keep that in their safe deposit box and let's say they pay their rent three years in advance they don't like to be bothered with the bill where they got a discount for prepayment they not take those kinds of papers the unclaimed property law gives the controller the discretion not to take property that has no intrinsic value and so we don't go around people safe deposit boxes for their marriage licenses that isn't aggression or law it's a matter of discretion and the fact is it's not worth anything to you as a matter of discretion and we can but the law lets you take it you don't have to check specific precisely there may be at our threshold like fifty dollars or something like that i don't know and i would be happy to get back to the court on that but the fact is we are not going around taking people's private papers let me ask you about another and it seems to me they differ in they own property that has some sort of status in california and they do not actively churn it nor do they change their dresses regularly  of them has moved on or has a different address than the one that the holder has for them again we don't have a record which to establish what these people have or have not done with get one and that should put them on notice that there's something wrong with it if something doesn't have to give notice to everybody else has to look out for themselves now we run it the the corporation has to give notice before it transfers anything state they also even i'm sorry even ball even go there for example they're sending in shipping checks to the person of their correct address but at the very same time telling the comptroller that they don't know where the individual lives i think your honor that that particular question has not been fully litigated in california there is an immunity the question of injunctive relief as able to establish that the holders had consistently been negligent in their particular dealings with them the question of whether they can get damages i'm not sure about your taxpayers standees under state law under federal law five twenty six of the california condor civil procedure has very very broad standing requirements and if these particular owners are unhappy about the way that the controller is either administering the particular project or the this ystem or unhappy about the constitutionality of it they have standing in state court to they said it was good yes yes you're so it's a very important i think for us to remember and that's what jones teaches that we have to look at the particular situation we have to balance the public interest did you have any other questions for talk and no i just fine thank you i'd like to respond to some of the some of the statements that i've just heard the notice from the holders of no value whatsoever i'll simply read from the apple leaves which is a state official supplemental excerpts of record i'm reading from page ten it's the statements of the controller's own spokesman russ lopez quote we're not stock brokers we're not money market managers we also don't want to be accused of trying to play the market t  all of these arguments i've heard were rejected by the u s supreme court enjoins sources flower at page seventeen seventeen they specifically say you have to pry direct mail notice to everyone and they take up this issue  that letter maybe it doesn't get to the right address but it but it may find its way to the crackdown address that's their whole discussion about certified mail versus regular mail they say that if they actually say in their decision and judge rober it just goes back to the post office the other thing is the reality of california and the real world is many of us have more than one address we have business addresses we have home addresses we have  addresses when i left when i left college i left instructions with my roommate if anything came to my address please forward it to me in sacramento that's regular mail what the controllers person says is we're going to get rid of the stock fact the rest of mr russ lopez's public statements on the policies of the controller are that they do the same thing with jewelry silver they have no funds to warehouse the property so it's all sold these are a lot of the there were only two judges justices on the panel there were not three so when it says majority opinion there was only one judge shredding justice right in the this decision states that all holders are absolutely immune whether they give dissent takes up taylor decision and states that the decision of the majority doesn't have any basis in the law because in essence we're making the state california of fornia the backstop for any judge judge kleinfeld you brought up that this litigation which have been resolved we're now in the fifth year of this case in the last four years while this case has been pending the unclaimed property fund increased from two billion dollars to four point eight billion dollars and that doesn't include property that didn't have a value the number of accounts increased from roughly four million accounts to seven point six million account a for a process that started in one nine hundred fifty nine if i were to draw a graph for you it would resemble a hockey stick for the last four years where the amount of takings go through the roth and that corresponds and i put all the public reports in front of you that they don't view this as private property to protect the owners they view it as revenue and one of the reasons they sell the property right away is because they have to pay these auditors who they've hired and i included the state auditor's report and i included the controller's response to that state authors report that says we're we've increased our revenue to four hundred million dollars a year through this process it's at page fifty five and fifty six of the response to the state auditors report in a supplemental declaration i attached the department of justice report which i understand they take issue with me and say that's confidential i attached it to the declaration was wrong i don't think we need an that you would think have any real bearing on our decision the department of justice report states that the controller knew that their actions for the last ten years were in violation of the constitution so when they're standing up here saying we're doing everything constitutionally there is the state reports have a qualified immunity issue that we have to resolve you know your honor so all i can think of that that would bear on is qualified immunity that's correct but it i guess where i'm going with that is when i say when i hear the controller off argue they make a lot of statements that they're following the constitutional law but when i read their internal documents which i provided to you they say we're not fol i've heard the saying about custodial sheet in california we don't hold custody of anything it's all sold there is no custodial sheets this is their next property we've plain meaning of terms in the statute when they say property it's not the same thing as the sale