Opinion ID: 784316
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: forfeiture of issues on appeal

Text: 16 ITOW asserts generally in its opening brief that the ICA preempts nearly all of Chapter 46.55 of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) — Towing and Impoundment — and Chapter 204-91A of the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) — Towing Businesses. Those provisions contain more than twenty-five pages of fine print language. Beyond its bold assertion, ITOW provides little if any analysis to assist the court in evaluating its legal challenge. Notably absent is any explanation of why most of the regulations are preempted and why the regulations do not fall within the well-defined exceptions to preemption. 17 Instead of making legal arguments, ITOW provides a five page laundry list of the challenged regulations and their titles, leaving the court to piece together the argument for preemption as to each regulation. Indeed, a quarter of ITOW's twenty-one page brief is simply a bullet point listing of statutes. The few explanatory footnotes fare no better at illuminating ITOW's argument. See Hilao v. Estate of Marcos, 103 F.3d 767, 778 n. 4 (9th Cir.1996) (The summary mention of an issue in a footnote, without reasoning in support of the appellant's argument, is insufficient to raise the issue on appeal.). By and large, the footnotes simply recast the statutory text rather than making an argument or even pointing the court to a claimed basis for preemption. 18 When reading ITOW's brief, one wonders if ITOW, in its own version of the spaghetti approach, has heaved the entire contents of a pot against the wall in hopes that something would stick. We decline, however, to sort though the noodles in search of ITOW's claim. As the Seventh Circuit observed in its now familiar maxim, [j]udges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs. United States v. Dunkel, 927 F.2d 955, 956 (7th Cir.1991). 19 Our circuit has repeatedly admonished that we cannot manufacture arguments for an appellant and therefore we will not consider any claims that were not actually argued in appellant's opening brief. Greenwood v. Fed. Aviation Admin., 28 F.3d 971, 977 (9th Cir.1994). Rather, we review only issues which are argued specifically and distinctly in a party's opening brief. Id. Significantly, [a] bare assertion of an issue does not preserve a claim. D.A.R.E. America v. Rolling Stone Magazine, 270 F.3d 793, 793 (9th Cir.2001). 20 The art of advocacy is not one of mystery. Our adversarial system relies on the advocates to inform the discussion and raise the issues to the court. Particularly on appeal, we have held firm against considering arguments that are not briefed. But the term brief in the appellate context does not mean opaque nor is it an exercise in issue spotting. However much we may importune lawyers to be brief and to get to the point, we have never suggested that they skip the substance of their argument in order to do so. It is no accident that the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure require the opening brief to contain the appellant's contentions and the reasons for them, with citations to the authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies. Fed.R.App.P. 28(a)(9)(A). We require contentions to be accompanied by reasons. 21 It is ITOW's burden on appeal to present the court with legal arguments to support its claims. Absent argument, we decline to pick through the many detailed sections and subsections in an effort to match the statutes and regulations with a preemption theory not articulated to us. Therefore, we do not address any statute or regulation that was not accompanied by legal argument in ITOW's opening brief. 2 22