IN RE KAREN A. BRADY-ZELL, Debtor. DANIELLE E. deBENEDICTIS, Creditor, Appellant, v. KAREN A. BRADY-ZELL, Debtor, Appellee.
No. 13-9014
United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
June 25, 2014
Howard, Selya and Thompson, Circuit Judges.
APPEAL FROM THE BANKRUPTCY APPELLATE PANEL FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
Logan A. Weinkauf and Benner & Weinkauf, P.C. on brief for appellee.
The debtor then petitioned for bankruptcy protection, effectively staying the pending state-court action. See
Following a bench trial, the bankruptcy court wrote a thoughtful rescript in which it concluded that the attorney had not carried her burden of proving either false pretenses or a false representation and proceeded to dismiss the adversary proceeding. See deBenedictis v. Brady-Zell (In re Brady-Zell), No. 10-1119, 2013 WL 1342479, at *8-9 (Bankr. D. Mass. Apr. 2, 2013). On an intermediate appeal, the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) upheld the bankruptcy court‘s ukase. It, too, offered a closely reasoned explanation of its ruling. See deBenedictis v. Brady-Zell (In re Brady-Zell), 500 B.R. 295, 301-05 (B.A.P. 1st Cir. 2013).
Unwilling to take “no” for an answer, the attorney appealed the BAP‘s decision. After careful consideration, we affirm.
We need not tarry. Having scrutinized the papers in the case and surveyed the applicable law, we discern no principled basis for disturbing the findings and conclusions of the lower courts. With this in mind, we can be brief; after all, we have explained before that when lower courts have supportably found the facts, applied the appropriate legal standards, articulated their reasoning clearly, and reached a correct result, a reviewing court ought not to write at length merely to hear its own words resonate. See, e.g., Vargas-Ruiz v. Golden Arch Dev., Inc., 368 F.3d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 2004); Lawton v. State Mut. Life Assur. Co., 101 F.3d 218, 220 (1st Cir. 1996); Ayala v. Union de Tronquistas, Local 901, 74 F.3d 344, 345 (1st Cir. 1996); Holders Capital Corp. v. Cal. Union Ins. Co. (In re San Juan Dupont Plaza Hotel Fire Litig.), 989 F.2d 36, 38 (1st Cir. 1993). Accordingly, we affirm the judgment for substantially the reasons previously elucidated by the
First: The attorney‘s principal claim is that, at the start of the lawyer-client relationship, the debtor falsely promised to pay her fees. In other words, she alleges that the debtor made a commitment to pay whatever fees thereafter might accrue without the slightest intention of honoring that commitment.
To prove that the debt is nondischargeable under
The burden of proving the elements underlying each of these six steps by a preponderance of the evidence rests with the party seeking nondischargeability. See McCrory, 260 F.3d at 32. A creditor arguing for an exception to nondischargeability must prove all six elements; if her proof falls short on any element, her quest for nondischargeability fails. See id.
Given this fully supportable assessment, we can find no fault with the court‘s determination that the attorney failed to carry her burden of proof. When the weight of the evidence is in equipoise, a party cannot plausibly be said to have carried the devoir of persuasion. See Toye v. O‘Donnell (In re O‘Donnell), 728 F.3d 41, 45 (1st Cir. 2013).
Second: The attorney labors to cast the relevant events in a light more flattering to her theory of the case. Stripped of rhetorical flourishes, this amounts to an invitation for us to reweigh the evidence and balance the decisional scales differently. We decline this invitation.
At this stage of bankruptcy litigation, the task of an appellate court is not to find the facts anew but, rather, to assay the bankruptcy court‘s factfinding for clear error.2 See Boroff v. Tully (In re Tully), 818 F.2d 106, 109 (1st Cir. 1987). While the evidence as a whole is capable of supporting the inference of knowing falsity drawn by the attorney, it likewise is capable of supporting the inference of inconclusiveness drawn by the bankruptcy court. That ends this aspect of the matter: it is apodictic that where the facts can support two plausible but conflicting interpretations of a body of evidence, the factfinder‘s choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous. See Gannett v. Carp (In re Carp), 340 F.3d 15, 25 (1st Cir. 2003); see also United States v. Romain, 393 F.3d 63, 69 (1st Cir. 2004).
Third: The attorney argues pejoratively that the debtor was shown to be a liar and that the debtor‘s “dishonest and untrustworthy” testimony undermines the bankruptcy court‘s factfinding. This argument is wide of the mark. The bankruptcy court did not rest its decision on any illusions about the debtor‘s veracity. To the contrary, the bankruptcy court found much of her testimony to be self-serving and not deserving of credence. See deBenedictis, 2013 WL 1342479, at *2.
Taking this lack of veracity into account, however, it proceeded to find that the attorney‘s proof was not preponderant. See id. at *7-8. We are not aware of any rule that mandates a finding of nondischargeability against a party simply because her
We need go no further. The Bankruptcy Code is designed to give debtors a fresh start, and exceptions to this principle should be narrowly construed. Rutanen v. Baylis (In re Baylis), 313 F.3d 9, 17 (1st Cir. 2002).
In this instance, the attorney did not carry her burden of proving her entitlement to such an exception. The courts below explained at length why the attorney‘s arguments (including arguments not mentioned above) were unavailing, and it would serve no useful purpose to repastinate that well-plowed ground. It suffices to say that the attorney‘s appeal, though full of sound and fury, is lacking in substance.
Affirmed.