Case ID: f-appx_703/html/0565-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

In the MATTER OF: FIRST REGIONAL BANCORP, Debtor, Vikaran Ghei, Co-Liquidating Trustee; Michael Zaitzeff, Co-Liquidating Trustee, Appellants, v. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as Receiver for First Regional Bank of California, Appellee.
    No. 16-56336
    United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit..
    Submitted November 16, 2017  Pasadena, California
    Filed November 20, 2017
    Jon L. Dalberg, Attorney, Roye Zur, Esquire, Attorney, Landau Gottfried & Berger LLP, Los Angeles, CA, for Appellants
    John A. Moe, II, Esquire, Bankruptcy Counsel, Dentons US LLP, Los Angeles, CA, Michelle Ognibene, Counsel, FDIC— Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Legal Division/Appellate Unit, Aldington, VA, for Appellee
    Before: KOZINSKI and IKUTA, Circuit Judges, and GETTLEMAN, District Judge.
    
      
       The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
    
    
      
       The Honorable Robert W. Gettleman, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.
    
   MEMORANDUM

1. “Allowing [a] parent [corporation] to keep any refunds arising solely from a subsidiary’s losses simply because the parent and subsidiary chose a procedural device to facilitate their income tax reporting unjustly enriches the parent.” In re Bob Richards Chrysler-Plymouth Corp., 473 F.2d 262, 265 (9th Cir. 1973). The joint filings of the First Regional Bancorp and the First Regional Bank did not establish a tax sharing agreement — express or implied — between the two. Appellants have failed to plausibly allege any relationship between the Bancorp and the Bank that would diverge from the rule of Bob Richards.

2. A court need not grant leave to amend a complaint if amendment would be futile. Leadsinger, Inc. v. BMG Music Pub., 512 F.3d 522, 532 (9th Cir. 2008). The Bancorp’s Affiliate Transactions Policy stipulated that the Bancorp would not benefit itself financially at the expense of the Bank, which decisively undercuts appellants’ argument that the Bancorp and Bank had an implied-in-fact agreement to share tax responsibilities and refunds. No amendment could have cured that defect.

AFFIRMED. 
      
       This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.