It may be pointless for someone who's not an attorney to evaluate a claim submitted to a city as a precursor to a lawsuit.

But to a layman's eye, the city of Ontario lays out a pretty strong case in the administrative claim it submitted Thursday to Los Angeles World Airports and the city of Los Angeles.

The claim followed by one day Ontario's letter to LAWA officially rejecting an offer the agency had made to sell L.A./Ontario International Airport back to Ontario for a lump sum of $474.5 million.

Back in 2009, when L.A./Ontario International Airport's tailspin was in its early stages, the L.A. agency that runs it pointed to Oakland's airport's similar decline in explaining that a down economy was hitting all mid-size airports hard.

At the time, Oakland's traffic had fallen to 9.5 million passengers from 11 million in 2008. ONT's traffic dropped to 4.8 million in 2009, down from 6.2 million in 2008 and 7.2 million in 2007.

Mayor Villaraigosa and Los Angeles World Airports say the price for the struggling facility must help cover the cost of improvements, but Inland Empire officials counter that it has a negative market value.

Inland Empire officials seeking control of LA/Ontario International Airport are balking at an unprecedented demand by Los Angeles that they buy the struggling operation for hundreds of millions of dollars.

ONTARIO -- The passenger numbers keep getting smaller - 8.6 percent if you are talking about the amount of fewer travelers who used LA/Ontario International Airport the first two months of this year compared to the same time frame in 2012.The passenger traffic figures released by Los Angeles World Airports on Tuesday shows an 8.2 percent drop in travelers flying in and out of ONT this past February compared to the same month in 2012.