Latest Case This Week: In re: Pena (9th Cir.)

Law and Non-Legal Entitlements: Kate Manne’s Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

LESLEY WEXLER

Illinois law professor Lesley Wexler comments on philosopher Kate Manne’s recent book, Entitled, in which Mann tackles “privileged men’s sense of entitlement” as a “pervasive social problem with often devastating consequences.” Wexler praises Manne’s work as “illuminating” and calls upon lawyers and law scholars to ask how such entitlements might best and safely be challenged and reallocated, and how new more egalitarian entitlements might be generated and enforced.

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In re: Pena

Court: US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Docket: 19-60029

Opinion Date: September 4, 2020

Judge: Bumatay

Areas of Law: Bankruptcy

Pena filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012, then owning 30 parcels of real estate. After Pena used cash collateral in an unauthorized manner, the bankruptcy court converted his case to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy and appointed a trustee, who managed Pena’s California rental properties. The trustee tendered the rents as cash collateral to the security holders of the respective security interests. The security holders did not accept the funds. In 2014, the trustee abandoned the rental parcels as part of her administration of the bankruptcy estate; her unsuccessful efforts to distribute the rents ended in 2016. She deposited $52,000 in unclaimed funds in the bankruptcy court registry and closed Pena’s bankruptcy case, listing the unclaimed funds (and their rightful owners) in her final account. Pena did not object to the court’s decree approving the trustee’s actions. In 2018, Pena unsuccessfully sought to recover the funds without reopening the bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court noted that when the bankruptcy closed, Pena still had $411,000 in unpaid, unsecured debt. The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel affirmed. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, finding that Pena had prudential standing and was a “person aggrieved” and that the absence of an opposing party, due to the trustee’s dismissal did not prevent it from exercising jurisdiction. The trustee did not abandon the rents by abandoning the properties from which they were collected; the funds remained the property of the bankruptcy estate and did not constitute an estate surplus.