morning and may i please the court jeffery crisp for the appellant beacon talent agency and i would like to reserve three minutes of my time for rebuttal watch the clock and remember it counts down i will thank you it cannot and while the lower court did not actually void the entire state court judgment what it did was excise that portion of it dealing with the punitive damages and then reversed the bankruptcy court's ruling granting the motion for summary judgment in favor of beacon so the central issue has been presented is in reversing the judgment of the bankruptcy court did the lower federal district court exceed its jurisdiction in voided the punitive damages awarded as part of that underlying state court judgment do you dispute that the punitive damages because they were not sought before default didn't comply with state law we do dispute that you would tell me why the judge was wrong in finding because first of all because it was the federal district court judge i know you've got a separate argument about his ability to do that i'm asking as a matter of state law because as i read the state law it's rather clear the damages period of damages must be noticed two days notice is not enough one case tells us we don't know what the appropriate notice is before default is entered that was not the case here correct that's correct however the opportunity wasn't given for beacon in the underlying state court case to present issues that would show that there may have been other circumstances where that wasn't necessary in that case and in fact it was never brought in front of the state court there was never an appeal of that portion of the default judgment and i saw it i understand it was never appealed my question is for federal bankruptcy purposes when you have a punitive damages judgment that has been obtained not in compliance with state law tell me what case instructs us that the district judge may not void or disregard that  the judgment because you have the opportunity under california code a civil procedure section for seventy three d to present those issues to the court and that the but your client never did that right no it was not to my client it was i'm understand i understand but had let's just take it had this steady state court judgment existed the way it does and had mr bass appealed it he would have been able to undo the punitive damages portion of the case would he not perhaps because for seventy three d says that the court may on motion of either party and after notice to the other party set aside any void judgment or order so there was no guarantee especially considering the amount of time that it passed between the time the judgment was entered and when this was brought forth for the very first time to the district court so the court may have set aside a declared a void but they may not have done so there's two things there and that's what i'm trying to focus on the statute says a court may set aside a void judgment i'm focusing on the last part of this isn't this avoid just because the punitive damages were we're not because it was something done in excess of the jurisdiction of the court based on that statute the five eighty statute and under the code of civil procedure so it's void a ball not void and i think there's going to lot of distinctions made about that very distinction void versus void the ball in the case law and there was some citation in the opening brief with respect to mr wiggins take on that saying look it may have been in excess of the jurisdiction of the port award those punitive damages but it's not necessarily void so there's the distinction between fundamental jurisdiction to look at a case over the parties over the subject matter versus acting in excess of of the jurisdiction in awarding something beyond what the statute says so that makes it very doable not boy are you pressing still on appeal your arguments that hold the apart from the peer damages award the default judgment on the merits if you will establish is not discharge ability yes why under those why isn't the district judge correct in saying that because it's a default judgment there's no issue preclusion the california standard for for the various things it would take to make it not just charge ability i think it was under what a foreign a six yes they were not met except when he did that your honor by itself established non dischargeable yes ok tell me why the judge was wrong then in saying that california law is not it is broader than the federal law with respect to the items in a forty six think i under those circumstances is was just being honest chargeable that yes because judge russell the bankruptcy judge looked at those factors considering not only the the default judgment itself and we can put aside the punitive i know  looked at them but the district judge then said on appeal if you will he was wrong because the california law is broader than than the definitions in a four and a six that would make nondestructive realty tell me why you think the district focusing only on that correct and that is by by exercising that portion and doing something which the robinson court says the district court couldn't do and that is void a a state court judgment or even look at it interpret it as if it were on a l then you exceeded his jurisdiction and so that's why the district court's decision must be reversed you know judge gould before was to sit down do you have any questions thank you no i have no questions mike one comment of it concerns me a little bit and i don't think and i think it's fairly clear from a from a fairly new case that the fact that punitive damages were awarded even if it wasn't avoided order which is almost i mean it's really uncanny how consistent those facts are with these facts well hope that this is a ninth circuit case that was affirmed and so my question is we've we've affirmed  bankruptcy court opinion that says that any of the elements of their required for punitive damages in california would have sufficed to establish intent for a sex there maybe a bankruptcy court decision to the contr have said that the punitive damages portion of the judgment is void but as the judgment came to the federal court it hadn't been stricken by any state court right so my question is what power does a federal judge this is right and robinson the issue of whether that contract was void was actually litigated in the state court the jurisdiction of the state court to reach that decision was actually let a gated in the state court so and i don't i agree completely that this the federal court cannot then function as a cart of appeals and say that the state know about it ok so we're nobody's reviewing a state court judgment here that it's valid or invalid and i still what i'm struggling with in this case and i need your help with if you help me is finding a case that says the role of a bag reps the judge or federal judge district judge on appeal is to look at the state court judgment and say i want it i won't treat part of it is valid for purposes of discharge ability because a state judge wouldn't found it is valid you had to look at it is there a case law that says that you know not off the top of my head but it sounds to me like it's part of this concept of collateral estoppel collateral estoppel or issue preclusion is not binding n right if if there's definitely not claim preclusion there's not no because the complaint says the judgment has a conversion and the judgment says by the way the big i don't want to forget before my time that's the biggest problem here by a mile if they didn't allocate the damages five hundred thousand dollars of damages could have been all common counts for all we know which would be discharged so you have to at least let a k t issue of how much of court is not rebound it's not required to use the judgement if it's clear i'm sure they would but they're not required they have to look at the for the what happened in the lower card as far as actual litigation i mean it's the same parties no doubt about it it's more or less the same facts no doubt about that but the so when the card is saying when it did when the bankruptcy court or the district court is saying well this one word here that you're saying is really important you know i don't think that there's enough here for me to jump by summary judgment to jump to the id and therefore the state court i mean the bankruptcy court and the district court have have the power to weigh how much that word punitive damages in the judgment should apply towards whether or not it's willful and malicious injury but the district court set is i'm going to ignore it completely because the state court would ignore it completely and as you said once absolutely no evidence at all they didn't show us how the court got to the state court got to the judgment they didn't include any of that in the motion for this reason i think clear had the state court got to the don't know what he was looking at what was in front of him we also they they didn't offer any testimony or any evidence any declarations from anybody other than counsel here's what happened here's what you know it to gi the bankruptcy court something to you know chew on at least other than the four words and the judgment on the word punitive damages that's all he had when he was looking at making summary judgment you know making a finding that there are you for asking your honor because i don't think there's any doubt void that if it there there isn't any doubt that they're worried and i have several state court cases that say that  ok i can give you the say then it's a matter of due process and if there is a case called green up the california supreme court said the due process requires its due process requires that the defendant get a notice the court's jurisdiction is void california courts would not enforce the judgment to the extent there's punitive damages because the court didn't have jurisdiction to entered attack is that a court foreign to the proceedings whether it's state or federal has to decide whether it is bound by that judgment or whether it can be collaterally attacked that is not in the same case from the outside and whether it's state or federal it's the same rule so the question is is it subject to collateral attack or not it's the same rule for state courts or federal courts and if a state court could collateral attack it a federal court could find that it could be collaterally attacked it doesn't it doesn't matter the feds do exactly what the state to do so you have to establish that this could not be ignored by a state here there's no state court judgement on it's in force ability you just have a default if you went out to more if there were no bankruptcy and tomorrow you went out to execute on that judgement in state court it x rated damages portion of the judgment court said we've decided this issue and robinson says federal court you clearly decided no one has decided the enforceability of this judgement in state court it is subject you concede to collateral attack so the question is why ask us to void it we can't avoid it and second of all getting to the issue of whether or not it could be ignored the robinson case specifically addressed that and said look we can hardly ignore the judgment without first reviewing it and deciding that it was invalid and were we to ignore it without overturning it we might create an even more unpleasant spectacle that is exactly the kind of state federal conflict that our many prevention doctrines race judicata and abstention among them were designed to avoid so they say we can't even look at it just ignore it because to do that means we have to make a determination on whether or not that judgment or that and didn't robinson say determined that a state court would not find the judgment void and therefore we can't find it void ourselves no i don't the issue wasn't put to them that well it was  precisely what the princess that the state court would not find this judgment void and therefore we have no ability to store sales i don't wish to affect accords a court judgment is the same one that the state would give that's what robins so then they didn't make the determination because they said we can't make the determination of whether or not it is void they said they want to see they want to see can force one of it there says we could then declare the judgment void ourselves and so we might as well do that forthwith they said we think not so they didn't do that they didn't look at that whether or not the state court would have said void or not they they left it alone because they didn't have jurisdiction to consider that argument