and this court's decision in idaho conservation week and the district court unfortunately misapplied those cases to this case and i think there are several reasons for this the first one has the district court i think lost sight of th extent does that pleading of injury make sense and i think that it does the reason it makes sense is because of the the law established illusion on applied in idaho conservation leagu that a plaintiffs who is within the zone of interests designed to be protected by procedures established in a statute is entitled to sue to enforce those procedures that is precisely in this case the reason is the statues it at issue here california civil code twenty five twenty seven requires pharmacy benefit managers or prescription drug claims processors to follow a procedure that procedure to conduct surveys of pharmacies in the state of california to determine through those surveys what their average dispensing fees our to retail customers and to disseminate the results of those surveys to the third party payer or clients and according to us also the pharmacy clients of the p b m or pharmacy benefit managers under the statute and the purpose of that as expressed by the legislature when it adopted the statute was to address a problem with the legislation perceived which was that the effective monopsony created by the pharmacy benefit manager industry that being the pharmacy benefit managers effectively consolidate the power of third party payers and create something like a monopsony allowing them to force on pharmacies reimbursement rates that don't fairly reflect their costs don't third party payer ors this information will be taken into account in the process of establishing the rates at which pharmacies will be paid and as a result we would hope the pharmacies would be paid more for the re among other things we want a little court order compliance with a statute we want to recover the penalties which are provided for under section twenty five twenty eight which is the companion statute it's the statute that provides pharmacists the right to sue in pharmacist by the w where she went she made a mistake in this case because she didn't seem that the statute is designed to establish procedures specifically for the benefit of our clients and what other forms like because she really didn't discuss procedural standing which is really what you're talking about our if you ignore the client aspect of it when she's far as i'm concerned we are only normally for the purpose of this case and that the substantive point that this statute was enacted for the purpose of protecting pharmacists these procedures were enacted for the purpose of obtaining this result which is higher being burson it's a pharmacist and with the supreme court that the person so willing which would be like your client and they take the statute or regulation gave them standing by giving them the right to get the information it didn't go f that requires the information that the gain to be given to the local pharmacies dispensers not right well i don't agree with that i think the statute does require that the claim you are but that would give you not procedural standing that would given you actual standing armor i'm limiting your procedural standing and that you are not a client ok and i'm saying how do you get over the that there's nothing in the statute that says you shall have the information i just don't think that's required that that would that would render if that were the rule that would render procedural standing  same as informational stand again from ational injury would be no difference than if it were required necessity that the information be provided to the plaintiff to my understanding that procedural standing rules provide that as long as the plaintiff's is within interest to be protected by the procedures established in the statute that plaintiff has standing and there's really no question in this case that the pharmacists we represent are within the zone of interest to be protected by the statute they are specifically the people give provided to the third party payer or certainly that's the most important thing cost because it's our belief and it was the legislatures belief and we've all read in our complaint that providing that information to third party paid orders would provide them with more accurate more accurate basis upon which to make determinations about what we inversnaid rates to pay to pharmacies that it works much like the free market or the fraud in the market theory works in securities cases in my view the idea is better information results in better decisions and that's what the statute was designed to accomplish the justice in a more questions i'll reserve my time case and that the first point that is critical for this court to recognize is a practicality is that this case is not about the question of whether the plaintiffs have the opportunity to proceed with the case to try to prosecute their rights under this statute whatever those rights may be it is clear that they have that right in california state court and indeed immediately after the district court issued its ruling under article three her i remember many years yes it's a twelve b six motion ok but based on the first amendment argument so that the case is proceeding in state court the question we're looking at here today is the question of whether in addition to the standing that the california legislature gave pharmacists to proceed with these cases in state court and this is not an unusual thing prince state of california to do the state of california likes to give people standing and i think the this court is most familiar with cases under business and professions code seven thousand two hundred in its earlier iteration prior to proposition sixty four under which anybody in the state had the right to and the question i have is why isn't that enough for a federal standing to the mere fact that they can recover a civil penalty i do not aware of any case that would hold the mere fact that the state there isn't there is no question i think that the pharmacists lobby in the state of california a strong lobby and got a bill passed and their legislative record reflects the fact that there was a hope that perhaps passage of this legislation would result in pay you were getting more information about what pharmacies charge that retail customers and pay you are as insurance companies finding out that in fact pharmacies make more money from retail but what do we do that well that was the point to the fact that the legislature hoped that that is something that could happen doesn't get us to the point where there is an injury proceeded as a regionally played in the complaint the theory of standing the theory of injury how were we hurt by what happened here was very straightforward if we had this information out there the to disclose and in that regard cases were cited for example the case dealing with the testers under the civil rights act you were not given accurate information that argument was rejected by the trial court on appeal the argument has morphed into a discussion of the prestigious role in jury requirements there are couple of reasons that the procedural injury analysis doesn't work here number one the all of the cases dealing with yes your hon thing i thought that the district court threw it out on all of these are analysis of ways you get to article three standing one is direct injury can do has the person been injured directly another is has the person been injured and that the individual hasn't gotten information to which they were entitled yes that's true we know that very well if the original can happen now with regard to procedural standing there are a couple of points i'd like to make first of all this the cases that decide are decided under procedural standing the cases under the environmental impact reports the cases involving endangered species one of the things those cases have in common is that there is in fact the procedure there is something that a process that has to be gone through by a federal agen process that involves gathering information that involves considering information that involves issuing reports that ultimately involves judicial oversight as to whether the procedure was followed and also judicial oversight as to anything it's not about a procedure it's about simply giving a report from the there pay or is that is not a procedure it's not a process that you go through to reach a conclusion that is based on get information you get information you give it to somebody and they have no obligation to do anything at all with it in any sense they can throw it in the trash can the day it comes in the door this is not a logical procedure up to provide some level of rational decision making information gathering information analysis written decision judicial oversight there's a perceived her to get you to ration of the citizen making here there's not there's put the study together give it to somebody period end of story no analysis they don't have to do anything with it it's not a procedure that leads to a decision that will impact that will  honor because it is it is merely a hope based on putting information out there there is no procedure to try to ensure that that information is used in any particular way there is no reason and this this is very clear i mean if the conclusion of the court is that you believe that if the insurance companies had this information they'd paid me the pharmacist more  money you know that that's that is a potential basis for jurisdiction the district court concluded that that that was not something that was reasonable to believe if you don't believe that then imposing the fact that there is a procedure imposed here if it doesn't get you there because it gets to that direction having the procedure is not relevant and particularly where the procedure is not the real process a real procedure that we do decision making does the fact that does that amount to the kind of procedure that gives you a basis for article three standing separate and apart from the question of actual injury is that the kind of procedure where failure to virginia had no idea the statute existed until they got a letter from plaintiff's counsel and when they did they read the statute and when they read the statute they concluded they were not covered by it and sent a letter back to plaintiff's counsel saying we don't think we' covered by so there was no great desire not to comply and if this were only about what will you do these studies next year who knows whether the case would have been settled already the case hasn't been settled talking millions or billions of dollars in statutory damages which is why would litigator pharmacy you know you represent pharmacy benefit managers i represent a company that it falls in that category ye the diversity yes let me just finish on this topic by by citing the court to what douglas county versus bad but forty eight f third fourteen ninety five which is another decision addressing the subject of procedural injury and i would note that in that case the court specifically talked about the fact that procedural injury has to have some relationship to a concrete and footnote six the court discusses the question of what relationship there has to be between the procedure and a claimed concrete injury and notes that that there has to be at least a reasonable probability side the first amendment don't you which is why the district court after deciding that there was no standing decided not to address the first amendment issue but we're not really all right thank you insured those ensure those insured patients are handled by an insurance company provides the insurance but in between the insurance company or third party payer because in some cases it's there on insurance companies or other entities but between the insurance process prescription drug claims for the third party payers are insurance companies and the pharmacies when the pharmacy takes a prescription vonage for a short patient pharmacy and puts information to a computer the computer says ok this is the insurance company that handles it's processed through the pharmacy benefit manager the that's right the the ten dollars co pay is is normally kept by the pharmacy in addition the pharmacy receives some additional payment from the insurance company but through the m in an amount that set by contract in that contract is negotiated not between the pharmacy and the insurance company but between the pharmacy and the p d s who act as essentially collective bargaining agents for insurance companies because normally they represent multiple insurance companies and multiple insurance plans this statute requires the p b m sue are really the entities conducting the actions here to perform surveys of pharmacies to ask the pharmacies sensual can't say well i represent a million or in some cases ten or fifteen or fifty million consumers who if you don't enter into a contract with me you can't build their prescriptions period there unavailable to you so the statute is designed to  collect information about what is charged to uninsured consumers which would normally be more than to insure consumers and provide that information to at least two of the third party payers or insurance companies and the idea of  not quite i think the argument though that the third party payer is recognizes result of scene while we're paying very very little to pharmacies but we're still under tremendous price pressure where it is where our dollars lost our contention is that information to insurance companies because insurance companies will begin to recognize with this information they're looking to the wrong place for their cost savings by requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions below cost in many cases they're not accomplishing what their goals ought to be their goal ought to be want to make sure that there's a network of pharmacies to provide a prescriptions to consumers and to to to obtain cost savings our contention is and i think the legislators believe wise that the third party payers are insurance companies would recognize that their cause savings they've they've they've run all of the cost savings they can out of pharmacies and in fact passed a reasonable cost even with a pharmacy some time ago we need to look somewhere else and namely they need to look to their p v amps as a source of their cost work for multiple entities they provide services for pharmacies if they process our claims and they charge us for that incidentally which is by the way another basis for standing want to just dress it briefly we've argued in operation i think we're correct about it that under our prescriptions and we're entitled something different for it to get back to the point the the the idea was that the third party payers are insurance companies would recognise that their cost savings are coming from the wrong place and they're pushing prices down at pharmacies and that's not where they ought to they ought to push down the p m s and i think it would be a mistake and really it's contrary to law to assume which is what their argument is to assume that the legislature does not know how to achieve the stated goals it has a stated purpose any obligation to provide just information they don't have an obligation under the statute to use the information that's provided to them but certainly canonical theory could in a theory that would be that the drives and the fraud in the market theory would provide that information is what benefits the free market process and the veges later believed and i think that one ought not second guess the legislature or the legislature belief that it would result me believe and they didn't say where to get that information