Silao v. Anderson

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: November 20, 2025
• Docket: 24-5024
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS NOV 20 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

IN RE: PANDORA HOSPICE CARE, No. 24-5024 INC. D.C. No. 5:23-cv-02050-DOC Debtor MEMORANDUM*

NICHOLAS SILAO,

Appellant,

v.

KARL T. ANDERSON,

Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California David O. Carter, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted October 22, 2025 Pasadena, California

Before: R. NELSON and VANDYKE, Circuit Judges, and COLE, District Judge.**

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Douglas R. Cole, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio, sitting by designation. Appellant Nicholas Silao seeks review of a district court order affirming a

bankruptcy court decision in this turnover action. Specifically, Silao contends that:

(1) the bankruptcy court clearly erred in finding that Silao owed a $137,000 debt to

the debtor, Pandora Hospice Care, Inc.; (2) the bankruptcy court abused its

discretion in awarding Pandora prejudgment interest; and (3) the bankruptcy court

abused its discretion in declining to grant Silao a new trial. According to Silao, the

$137,000 in funds he admittedly received from Pandora was not a loan from

Pandora, but rather a partial repayment for some $442,000 that Silao had earlier

loaned to Pandora.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 158(d)(1). Like the district court

below, we review findings of fact for clear error. In re Tucson Ests., Inc., 912 F.2d

1162, 1166 (9th Cir. 1990). We review an award of prejudgment interest for an

abuse of discretion. In re Agric. Rsch. & Tech. Grp., Inc., 916 F.2d 528, 533 (9th

Cir. 1990) (citing W. Pac. Fisheries, Inc. v. S.S. President Grant, 730 F.2d 1280,

1289 (9th Cir. 1984)). And we likewise review the bankruptcy court’s denial of a

motion for a new trial for an abuse of discretion. Williams v. Gaye, 895 F.3d 1106,

1122–23 (9th Cir. 2018) (citing Lam v. City of San Jose, 869 F.3d 1077, 1084 (9th

Cir. 2017)). These deferential standards of review largely doom Silao’s appeal.

Because the parties are familiar with the facts, we do not belabor them here.

2 24-5024 To start, Silao has not shown that the bankruptcy court clearly erred in

determining that he owed $137,000 to Pandora.1 “A finding is ‘clearly erroneous’

when[,] although there is evidence to support it, the reviewing court on the entire

evidence is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been

committed.” United States v. U.S. Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395 (1948). That

standard is satisfied if the finding in dispute is “(1) illogical, (2) implausible, or

(3) without support in inferences that may be drawn from the facts in the record.”

Meza-Carmona v. Garland, 113 F.4th 1163, 1167 (9th Cir. 2024) (citation omitted).

As an appellate body, we must “give due regard to the trial court’s opportunity to

judge the witnesses’ credibility.” In re The Village at Lakeridge, LLC, 814 F.3d

993, 1002 (9th Cir. 2016) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a)(6)). And “so long as the

bankruptcy court’s findings are ‘plausible in light of the record viewed in its

entirety,’” we may not reverse “even if we ‘would have weighed the evidence

differently.’” Id. (quoting Anderson v. City of Bessemer, 470 U.S. 564, 574 (1985)).

1 Silao’s briefing on this front elides two distinct questions: (1) whether the bankruptcy court’s finding that Silao owed the funds was clearly erroneous, and (2) whether a turnover action under 11 U.S.C. § 542(b) was appropriate in light of the parties’ dispute over whether Silao owed Pandora the funds. Silao has forfeited the latter argument by failing to press it in the bankruptcy court. See One Indus., LLC v. Jim O’Neal Distrib., Inc., 578 F.3d 1154, 1158 (9th Cir. 2009) (“A party … may not press an argument on appeal that it failed to raise in the district court.”).

3 24-5024 Here, given (1) the inconsistencies among Pandora’s original and amended

tax returns (the latter of which an accountant prepared at Silao’s direction after

Pandora filed for bankruptcy); (2) that Silao himself prepared the Pandora checks

indicating that the amounts Silao received from Pandora were loan repayments;

(3) the bankruptcy court’s determination that Silao was not credible, which we are

poorly suited to revisit; (4) the testimony from Karl T. Anderson, Pandora’s

Chapter 7 trustee, whom the bankruptcy court did find credible; and (5) the lack of

any documentary evidence confirming that Silao had previously transferred money

to Pandora as he claimed, we cannot say that the bankruptcy court clearly erred in

determining that Pandora loaned Silao $137,000 (rather than finding the funds

represented partial repayment for an earlier loan from Silao to Pandora).

Nor did the bankruptcy court abuse its discretion in awarding prejudgment

interest. Absent a statutory directive, trial courts have discretion to award

prejudgment interest in cases arising under federal law. Ministry of Def. & Support

for the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran v. Cubic Def. Sys., Inc., 665

F.3d 1091, 1102 (9th Cir. 2011). The bankruptcy court appropriately exercised that

discretion in deciding to award such interest here.

It did, however, abuse its discretion in determining the date on which

prejudgment interest began to accrue. The bankruptcy court held that prejudgment

interest began to accrue on December 31, 2016, a date it selected because Pandora’s

4 24-5024 unamended 2016 tax return contained the $137,000 figure. In other words, the

bankruptcy court looked to the date of the loan. But bankruptcy courts typically set

the accrual date on either the date the funds were demanded, or the date the suit was

filed (which acts as a form of demand). See, e.g., In re Gillett, 55 B.R. 675, 680

(Bankr. S.D. Fla. 1985); In re Tapmasters Chelsea, LLC, 621 B.R. 580, 584 (Bankr.

S.D.N.Y. 2020). We find persuasive this focus on when the money came due to the

debtor, and we elect to follow it here. It appears that Anderson filed his turnover

complaint without first making a demand. So the date he filed the complaint (and

thus demanded the money)—October 2, 2018—fixes the date on which prejudgment

interest began to accrue. We therefore vacate the district court’s award of interest

and remand for a new award consistent with this disposition.

Finally, the bankruptcy court did not abuse its discretion in declining to grant

Silao a new trial. Silao based his request on evidence to which he had access at the

time of the trial in the bankruptcy court. But a “defendant’s desire to introduce

additional evidence after losing the case d[oes] not constitute a proper ground for

granting a new trial.” Brown v. Wright, 588 F.2d 708, 710 (9th Cir. 1978).

AFFIRMED in part, REVERSED and VACATED in part, and

REMANDED.

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