McFarland v. General Electric Capital Corp. (In re International Manufacturing Group, Inc.)

538 B.R. 22
CourtUnited States Bankruptcy Court, E.D. California
DecidedSeptember 10, 2015
DocketCase No. 14-25820-D-11; Adv. Pro. No. 15-2130-D
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 538 B.R. 22 (McFarland v. General Electric Capital Corp. (In re International Manufacturing Group, Inc.)) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Bankruptcy Court, E.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McFarland v. General Electric Capital Corp. (In re International Manufacturing Group, Inc.), 538 B.R. 22 (Cal. 2015).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM DECISION

ROBERT S. BARDWIL, United States Bankruptcy Judge

This is the motion of defendant General Electric Capital Corporation (“GECC”) to dismiss the complaint of the plaintiff, Beverly McFarland, who is also the trustee in the chapter 11 case in which this adversary proceeding is pending (the “trustee”), pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 9(b) and 12(b)(1), made applicable in this proceeding by Fed. R. Bankr.P. 7009 and 7012(b), for failure to plead fraud with particularity and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The plaintiff has filed opposition, GECC has filed a reply, and the court has heard oral argument. For the following reasons, the motion will be denied.

In ruling on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a court “aceept[s] as true all facts alleged in the complaint, and draw[s] .all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff.” al-Kidd v. Ashcroft, 580 F.3d 949, 956 (9th Cir.2009), citing Newcal Indus., Inc. v. Ikon Office Solution, 513 F.3d 1038, 1043 n.2 (9th Cir.2008). The court assesses whether the complaint contains “sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” al-Kidd, 580 F.3d at 956, citing Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949, 173 L.Ed.2d 868, (2009), in turn quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007).

By her complaint, the trustee seeks to avoid four transfers of $500,000 each made by an entity named Olivehurst Glove Manufacturers, LLC (“Olivehurst”) to GECC as actual fraudulent conveyances, pursuant to § 548(a)(1)(A) of the Bankruptcy Code,1 and to recover the value of the transfers from GECC, pursuant to § 550. The transfers were made within the year prior to the filing of the chapter 11 petition of International Manufacturing Group, Inc. (“IMG”), the debtor in the case in which this adversary proceeding is pending. Oli-vehurst has been substantively consolidated into IMG’s bankruptcy estate. GECC makes five arguments in support of its [25]*25contention that the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The court will take them in the order presented by GECC.2

I. The Fraudulent Transfer Versus Preference Issue

First, GECC contends the trustee’s claim is a preference claim, not a fraudulent transfer claim, and that, as a preference claim, it is time-barred because all of the transfers were made more than 90 days before the date IMG filed its petition, May 30, 2014. There is no dispute that the transfers were made outside the 90-day period, and therefore cannot be recovered as preferences. The question is whether, even if they could have been recovered as preferences if they had been made within the. 90 days, they might be fraudulent transfers as well. GECC cites Boston Trading Group, Inc. v. Burnazos, 835 F.2d 1504 (1st Cir.1987), for the proposition that “fraudulent transfer laws cannot be used to recover payments to legitimate lenders where the transferee engaged in fraud to raise the money used to repay the lender.” GECC’s Motion, filed July 24, 2015 (“Mot.”), at 10:15-17.

In Boston Trading, a court-appointed receiver for a company that managed the funds of commodities investors sought to recover as actual fraudulent conveyances payments made by the company’s owners, Shaw and Kepreos, from the company’s funds, to the individual who had sold them the company, Burnazos, toward the purchase price. The evidence showed that Shaw and Kepreos had been churning investors’ accounts by making unnecessary trades in order to generate commissions; the receiver alleged Burnazos knew or should have known about their dishonest activity.

The court held that where an individual uses his corporation’s money, which - he obtained dishonestly, to pay his debt to a creditor “who knows of, but did not participate in, [the] dishonesty,” the payment is not recoverable as an actual fraudulent conveyance. 835 F.2d at 1510. The court’s discussion and holding both strongly suggest the court believed that a preference, which the payments to Burnazos clearly were, cannot also be a fraudulent transfer. The court made this blanket statement: “The cases and the commentators ... state that fraudulent conveyance law does not seek to void transfers in a... circumstance known as a ‘preference.’ ” Id. In explanation, the court stated that the purpose of the fraudulent transfer laws is not to achieve an equal distribution among creditors (id. at 1508-09), but “to see that the debtor uses his limited assets to satisfy some of his creditors.... ” Id. at 1509. The court added that “to find an actual intent to defraud creditors when... an insolvent debtor prefers a less worthy creditor, would tend to deflect fraudulent conveyance law from one of its basic functions (to see that an insolvent debtor’s limited funds are used to pay some worthy creditor), while providing it with a new function (determining which creditor is the more worthy).” Id.

In short, the Boston Trading court came very close to holding, if it did not actually do so, that a transfer that would constitute a preference if made within the preference period cannot also be an actual fraudulent conveyance. However, the court did not also find that a preference cannot be a constructive fraudulent conveyance. Instead, it remanded for a retrial on the issue of whether Burnazos gave a “fair equivalent” in exchange for the payments. 835 F.2d at 1513-14. The court did hold, [26]*26as to the “good faith” defense to a constructive fraudulent transfer claim, that lack of good faith cannot be found from the mere fact that the creditor received a preference, even where the creditor knew the -payment was made with improperly obtained funds. Id. at 1511-12.

Whatever “good faith” may mean ... we believe it does not ordinarily refer to the transferee’s knowledge of the source of the debtor’s monies which the debtor obtained at the expense of other creditors. To find a lack of “good faith” where the transferee does not participate in, but only knows that the debtor created the other debt through some form of, dishonesty is to void the transaction because it amounts to a kind of ‘preference’ — concededly a most undesirable kind of preference, one in which the claims of alternative creditors differ considerably in their moral worth, but a kind of preference nonetheless. And all the reasons that militate against finding a § 7 violation (‘actual fraud’) in such circumstances ... militate with at least equal force against finding a § 4 violation (‘constructive fraud’).

Id. at 1512 (citations omitted).3

GECC’s reliance on Boston Trading is not persuasive in this case for several reasons.

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538 B.R. 22, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mcfarland-v-general-electric-capital-corp-in-re-international-caeb-2015.