Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07190/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07190-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 8, 2015 Decided July 12, 2016

No. 14-7190

SANDRA MARSHALL,

APPELLANT

v.

HONEYWELL TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS INC, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:05-cv-02502)

JoAnn Patricia Myles argued the cause and filed the brief

for appellant.

Leslie Paul Machado argued the cause for appellees. With

him on the brief were Sarah E. Moffett, Paul W. Mengel III,

Julia D. Di Vito, Zachary S. Stinson, M. Ginger McCauley, and

John B. Flood. Isaias I. Alba entered an appearance.

Before: HENDERSON and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges, and

RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

RANDOLPH.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

USCA Case #14-7190 Document #1624181 Filed: 07/12/2016 Page 1 of 25
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RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge: Sandra Marshall’s

appeal is from the district court’s grant of summary judgment

dismissing her discrimination complaint on the ground of

“judicial estoppel,” stemming from her failure to disclose this

lawsuit and related administrative proceedings on the schedules

she filed with the bankruptcy court. 

Marshall worked at the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration in Maryland, making $50,000 a year as a “voice

control manager.” Her co-employers were Honeywell

Technology Solutions, Inc.,1 a government contractor, and L-3

Communications Government Services, Inc., a subcontractor

now known as Engility. In late 2003, another company, SGT,

Inc., took over the subcontract under Honeywell. SGT

interviewed Marshall but did not hire her.

On December 29, 2003, Marshall filed charges against SGT

with a Maryland human relations commission and with the

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that SGT

had unlawfully discriminated against her based on her race and

sex and that SGT retaliated against her because she had filed

other discrimination complaints against other companies. In

February 2004 – the dates and the sequence of filings have some

significance – Marshall filed two additional charges with the

same agencies, one against Honeywell, the other against

Engility. Both of her charges also alleged race and sex

discrimination and retaliation. By this time, Marshall therefore 

had three ongoing administrative proceedings against three

separate companies, none of which were affiliated with each

1

 In filing this suit, Marshall incorrectly identified Honeywell

Technology Solutions, Inc., as “Honeywell Technology Systems, Inc.”

The district court opinion from which Marshall appeals reflects the

incorrect name, as does the caption in this court. Marshall v.

Honeywell Tech. Sys., 73 F. Supp. 3d 5 (D.D.C. 2014).

USCA Case #14-7190 Document #1624181 Filed: 07/12/2016 Page 2 of 25
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other. In August 2005, Marshall retained attorney JoAnn P.

Myles to represent her in these proceedings and in any lawsuits

that might result from them.

In September 2005, while her three EEOC proceedings

were going forward, Marshall filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy

petition in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of

Columbia. See 11 U.S.C. § 301. Marshall was then residing in

Washington, D.C. Freshstart Solutions, Inc. served as her

“bankruptcy petition preparer,” see 11 U.S.C. § 110, charging

her a fee of $185.00.2

 This was Marshall’s second bankruptcy

petition in ten years. The Bankruptcy Code bars individuals

from filing a new Chapter 7 petition within eight years of an

earlier petition. 11 U.S.C. § 727(a)(8). Marshall had filed her

1995 petition with the assistance of an attorney in federal

bankruptcy court in Baltimore, Maryland. That court granted

her a discharge. 

One of the schedules Marshall submitted with her

September 2005 petition required her to list “all suits and

administrative proceedings” to which she “is or was a party

within one year” preceding her bankruptcy petition. On her

“Statement of Financial Affairs,” Marshall listed three such

2 During the first Meeting of Creditors, Marshall told the trustee

that although her sister’s neighbor had looked over her bankruptcy

filings, he had not charged her any money for doing so. But a

document filed with the bankruptcy court signed by her preparer –

“Disclosure of Compensation of Bankruptcy Preparer” – showed that

this neighbor worked for Freshstart Solutions, Inc., and had charged

Marshall $185. See In re Frazier, No. 12-29668-DER, 2013 WL

654399, at *4 (Bankr. D. Md. Feb. 21, 2013) (“[T]he reasonable value

of the services of a bankruptcy petition preparer in a simple,

straightforward consumer Chapter 7 bankruptcy case . . . does not

exceed $100.00.”). 

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matters. Two were civil actions in which she was a defendant. 

She gave the name of the court and its location in each case; in

both she reported that judgment had been entered against her. 

The third matter she listed – “Internal Revenue Service vs

Sandra McDougald”3 – was an administrative proceeding that

had not yet ripened into a judicial proceeding: Marshall left a

blank under the form’s heading “COURT OR AGENCY AND

LOCATION.” The only detail she provided was that the IRS

matter was “Pending.” On her Schedule E – “Creditors Holding

Unsecured Priority Claims” – she listed the IRS “Insolvency

Div” as a creditor in the amount of $5,500.4

Nowhere on her Statement of Financial Affairs (or on any

other schedule) did Marshall disclose her three administrative

proceedings against SGT, Honeywell, and Engility. Under

penalty of perjury, she signed the Statement and affirmed that

her answers were “true and correct.” She also filed a “Personal

Property” schedule, which required her to disclose all

“contingent and unliquidated claims of every nature . . ..” See

11 U.S.C. § 521(a)(1)(B)(ii). Again she stated under penalty of

perjury that she had “None.” On her Schedule F – “Creditors

3

 Marshall has changed her name at least twice. She filed her

1995 bankruptcy under the name Sandra McDougald, her 2005

bankruptcy under the name Sandra McDougald-Marshall, and her

discrimination case under the name Sandra Marshall.

4

 There are several reasons to believe the IRS action was an

administrative proceeding. In her deposition in this case, Marshall

stated that she had been sued only twice, once by a company called

Carydale and once by the State Department Federal Credit Union. 

There is also no record in the Tax Court or in any federal district court

of a lawsuit between Marshall and the Internal Revenue Service. This

suggests that the matter was an administrative proceeding before an

appeals officer within the agency. See INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE,

INTERNAL REVENUE MANUAL 1.1.7 (2015). 

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Holding Unsecured Nonpriority Claims” – Marshall listed

“Joann Myles, Esquire.” Myles was the attorney representing

Marshall in the three EEOC proceedings. Marshall did not

report how much she then owed Myles. Her debts, including

priority and nonpriority claims of 50 creditors, totaled

$135,884.74. She reported total assets of $100.

Two months after she filed for bankruptcy, in the fall of

2005, Marshall attended a meeting of creditors, although none

of her creditors attended. See 11 U.S.C. § 341. During the

session, in response to the trustee’s written interrogatories and

the trustee’s questioning, Marshall revealed that she had “an

EEOC claim.” When the trustee asked, “Against whom?”

Marshall replied, “Honeywell.” As to the status of her claim,

she said it was “pending.” The trustee then asked whether she

had an attorney representing her in the Honeywell proceeding. 

She answered yes and, at the trustee’s urging, she identified her

attorney as JoAnn Myles and provided Myles’ telephone

number. Attorney Myles already knew of Marshall’s Chapter 7

filing. As a creditor herself, she had received notice from the

bankruptcy court. According to Marshall and Myles, her

attorney later had a telephone conversation with the trustee and

informed him of Marshall’s other two administrative

proceedings against Engility and SGT. 

On December 30, 2005, Myles filed on Marshall’s behalf 

a complaint in federal district court in Washington, D.C. against

Honeywell, Engility, and SGT. Marshall’s complaint contained

a single count alleging age discrimination in violation of the Age

Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq. She

sought more than two million dollars in damages. Paragraph 9

of her complaint stated that “prior to filing this civil action”

Marshall had filed “a written charge of age discrimination with”

the EEOC and the local human rights commission. That

statement was false. Marshall did not lodge an age

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discrimination charge before those agencies until after she filed

the lawsuit. In the next paragraph, Marshall stated that she

“filed this action subsequent to the expiration of sixty (60) days

from the filing of a charge of age discrimination with the

[Maryland human rights commission] and the EEOC . . ..” That

too was false.5

Under the bankruptcy rules, “a debtor is under a duty both

to disclose the existence of pending lawsuits when he files a

petition in bankruptcy and to amend his petition if circumstances

change during the course of the bankruptcy.” Moses v. Howard

Univ. Hosp., 606 F.3d 789, 793 (D.C. Cir. 2010); see 11 U.S.C.

§ 541(a)(7). “[W]hen an estate is in bankruptcy under Chapter

7,” as Marshall’s estate was at the time, “the trustee is the

representative of the estate and retains the sole authority to sue

and be sued on its behalf.” Moses, 606 F.3d at 793. Marshall

did not amend her bankruptcy petition after she filed her age

discrimination lawsuit. Rather, her attorney Myles alleges that

she – Myles – spoke with the trustee’s secretary over the phone

about having filed the December 2005 lawsuit.

In late January 2006 the trustee issued a “Notice of Possible

Dividends” informing creditors that Marshall’s estate may have

assets after all, but giving no other information. In February

2006, the bankruptcy court granted Marshall a discharge from

5 The district court, finding that these statements were untrue,

issued an order to show cause why sanctions under Rule 11 of the

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure should not be imposed on attorney

Myles. Marshall v. Honeywell Tech. Sols., Inc., 536 F. Supp. 2d 59,

64 n.4 (D.D.C. 2007). The court later discharged the show cause order.

USCA Case #14-7190 Document #1624181 Filed: 07/12/2016 Page 6 of 25
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bankruptcy6

 and in June 2006 the bankruptcy court closed the

case because her estate had no assets.

In early 2007, Marshall expanded her lawsuit. By then

Marshall had received right-to-sue letters from the EEOC in her

three administrative actions, notifying her that the agency had

terminated its investigation of her charges against SGT,

Honeywell and Engility. Marshall then amended her age

discrimination district court complaint against these companies

to add a litany of new charges, including counts of race and sex

discrimination and retaliation against each defendant.

The district court dismissed many of her new charges and

dismissed the age discrimination count because it had not been

timely filed. Marshall v. Honeywell Tech. Sols., Inc., 536 F.

Supp. 2d 59, 64 n.4 (D.D.C. 2007).

Later, during several years of extensive discovery, the

defendants learned for the first time of Marshall’s simultaneous

bankruptcy case. Then, in February 2009, Marshall’s attorney

Myles provided the defendants’ attorneys with “Supplemental

Discovery Documents” consisting of Marshall’s filings in the

bankruptcy proceeding. The documents revealed that Marshall

had omitted her three administrative proceedings on her

bankruptcy schedules and that she had not amended her

bankruptcy filings to disclose what has become this lawsuit.

The district court – on December 18, 2009 – dismissed

Marshall’s complaint without prejudice, an interim decision

Marshall has not challenged on appeal. Marshall v. Honeywell

Tech. Sols., Inc., 675 F. Supp. 2d 22 (D.D.C. 2009). The court

held that Marshall’s causes of action, which “existed by the time

6

 Marshall waited until late March 2006 to serve the three

defendants in her age discrimination lawsuit.

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Marshall filed her bankruptcy petition in September 2005,”

became property of the estate under the Bankruptcy Code when

she filed her bankruptcy petition. Id. at 25. Because Marshall

failed to list these causes of action on her bankruptcy schedules,

the bankruptcy trustee did not abandon this estate property when

he failed to intervene. Id. The trustee was therefore the real

party in interest and Marshall did not have standing to pursue

the lawsuit she had instituted. Id. at 26. Only then, in January

2010, five years after her bankruptcy discharge, did Marshall

move to reopen her bankruptcy case, a motion the bankruptcy

court promptly granted. Two months later, in March 2010,

Marshall amended several of the bankruptcy schedules she had

filed in 2005. For the first time she disclosed this lawsuit as an

asset valued at “$1,000,000.” She also added, on her Schedule

D, attorney JoAnn Myles as a secured creditor holding a claim

in the amount of “$150,000 Plus.”

In June 2010, the district court granted the trustee’s motion

to reinstate Marshall’s case, substituting the trustee for

Marshall’s estate as the plaintiff. But Marshall’s estate had no

money to hire another attorney and, given the passage of time,

the bankruptcy trustee informed the district court that he could

not “attract new counsel, unfamiliar with the case, on a

contingency basis.” Six months later, in early 2011, after

settlement negotiations between the trustee and the defendants

failed to yield an agreement, the trustee abandoned the case. As

a result, the suit reverted to Marshall as plaintiff. See Moses,

606 F.3d at 795.

The defendants then filed a motion for summary judgment

on the basis of judicial estoppel, arguing that Marshall’s

deception barred her from pursuing this action. The district

court, finding Moses v. Howard University Hospital, 606 F.3d

789 (D.C. Cir. 2010), controlling, granted the defendants’

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motion for reasons we describe in a moment. Marshall v.

Honeywell Tech. Sys., 73 F. Supp. 3d 5 (D.D.C. 2014).

At last we come to the issues in this case. One question, left

open in Moses, 606 F.3d at 797, is the appropriate standard of

review of judicial estoppel district court decisions granting

summary judgment in cases such as this. Ordinarily we review

a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. See, e.g.,

Doe v. Gates, 981 F.2d 1316, 1322 (D.C. Cir. 1993). A large

majority of the courts of appeals, heeding the Supreme Court’s

description of judicial estoppel as “an equitable doctrine invoked

by a court at its discretion,” New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U.S.

742, 750 (2001), have adopted an abuse-of-discretion standard

rather than de novo review.7

 Many of the reasons underlying

these decisions are ably set forth in Alternative System 

Concepts, Inc. v. Synopsys, Inc., 374 F.3d 23, 30-32 (1st Cir.

2004). We add another. De novo review would displace the

discretion of the district court to apply judicial estoppel with the

discretion of the appellate court to do so. We see no sense in

this. See United States v. McKinney, 919 F.2d 405, 418 (7th Cir.

1990) (Posner, J. concurring). We therefore join the majority of

7 See Guay v. Burack, 677 F.3d 10, 15-16 (1st Cir. 2012);

McNemar v. Disney Store, Inc., 91 F.3d 610, 613 (3d Cir. 1996); King

v. Herbert J. Thomas Mem’l Hosp., 159 F.3d 192, 196, 198 (4th Cir.

1998); Jethroe v. Omnova Sols., Inc., 412 F.3d 598, 599-600 (5th Cir.

2005); EEOC v. CRST Van Expedited, Inc., 679 F.3d 657, 678 (8th

Cir. 2012); Engquist v. Or. Dept. of Agric., 478 F.3d 985, 1000 (9th

Cir. 2007); Eastman v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 493 F.3d 1151, 1155-56

(10th Cir. 2007); Talavera v. Sch. Bd. of Palm Beach Cty., 129 F.3d

1214, 1216 (11th Cir. 1997); Data Gen. Corp. v. Johnson, 78 F.3d

1556, 1565 (Fed. Cir. 1996); but see Browning v. Levy, 283 F.3d 761,

775 (6th Cir. 2002) (reviewing application of judicial estoppel de

novo); United States v. Hook, 195 F.3d 299, 305 (7th Cir. 1999)

(same).

USCA Case #14-7190 Document #1624181 Filed: 07/12/2016 Page 9 of 25
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circuit courts in holding that the standard of review in this sort

of case is abuse of discretion.

 In exercising its discretion to invoke judicial estoppel, the

district court relied on our opinion in Moses, the only opinion of

our court in a comparable case. Judicial estoppel “prevents a

party from asserting a claim in a legal proceeding that is

inconsistent with a claim taken by that party in a previous

proceeding.” New Hampshire, 532 U.S. at 749. In Moses we

wrote: “every circuit that has addressed the issue has found that

judicial estoppel is justified to bar a debtor from pursuing a

cause of action in district court where that debtor deliberately

fails to disclose the pending suit in a bankruptcy case.” 606

F.3d at 798. Or as Judge Easterbrook put the point for the

Seventh Circuit, the circuit courts “hold that a debtor in

bankruptcy who denies owning an asset, including a chose in

action or other legal claim, cannot realize on that concealed

asset after the bankruptcy ends.” Cannon-Stokes v. Potter, 453

F.3d 446, 448 (7th Cir. 2006).

The basic concept is not new. Early in the last century the

Supreme Court laid down a related rule. “It cannot be that a

bankrupt, by omitting to schedule and withholding from his

trustee all knowledge of certain property, can, after his estate in

bankruptcy has been finally closed up, immediately thereafter

assert title to the property on the ground that the trustee had

never taken any action in respect to it. If the claim was of value

(as certainly this claim was, according to the judgment below),

it was something to which the creditors were entitled, and this

bankrupt could not, by withholding knowledge of its existence,

obtain a release from his debts, and still assert title to the

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property.” First Nat’l Bank v. Lasater, 196 U.S. 115, 119

(1905).8

Our court in Moses also held that in order for judicial

estoppel to apply, there must be “a discernible connection”

between the bankruptcy proceeding and the current lawsuit. 606

F.3d at 799. The connection here is the same. In Marshall’s

bankruptcy schedules, she denied the existence of her thencurrent discrimination claims and she brought this lawsuit after

filing for bankruptcy even though, as in Moses, she was not a

proper plaintiff. Id.

 

The court in Moses identified three other questions the

district court “should answer in deciding whether to apply

judicial estoppel.” Id. at 798. The first is whether “a party’s

later position [is] clearly inconsistent with its earlier position

. . ..” Id. Here the district court found that Marshall pursued

this lawsuit despite having sworn, under penalty of perjury, that

no such lawsuit or legal claims existed. The district court also

found that Marshall repeatedly failed to amend her bankruptcy

petition when circumstances changed, despite having a legal

duty to do so. 73 F. Supp. 3d at 9-10. And as in Moses, 606

F.3d at 799, Marshall held herself “out before the District Court

as a proper plaintiff, a position which was clearly inconsistent

with [her] pursuit of bankruptcy.”

 

The next question Moses posed is: “Has the party succeeded

in persuading a court to accept that party’s earlier position, so

8

 The Supreme Court reiterated this statement twenty years later. 

In Danciger v. Smith, 276 U.S. 542, 547 (1928), the Court stated that

“[t]he doctrine” of Lasater is “that a bankrupt who omits to schedule

and withholds all knowledge of a valuable claim, cannot, after

obtaining a discharge from his debts, assert title to such claim and

maintain a suit thereon in his own right . . ..” 

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that judicial acceptance of an inconsistent position in a later

proceeding would create the perception that either the first or the

second court was misled?” Id. at 798. Here again the Moses

case and Marshall’s case are indistinguishable and the district

court so found. 73 F. Supp. 3d at 10. To quote from our opinion

in Moses, “the bankruptcy court’s decision to initially discharge

Moses [and Marshall] from Chapter 7, and the District Court’s

decision to allow this case to continue even during the pendency

of Moses’s [and Marshall’s] bankruptcy proceedings, leaves

little doubt that Moses [and Marshall] succeeded in hiding the

inconsistency from the courts and ‘creating the perception that

either the first or the second court was misled.’” Moses, 606

F.3d at 799 (quoting New Hampshire, 532 U.S. at 750).

The third question in Moses dealt with the effect of the

debtor’s inconsistent positions. Here, the district court

determined that “Marshall’s bankruptcy creditors were

disadvantaged by her non-disclosure. Marshall’s non-disclosure

of her discrimination claims allowed the bankruptcy proceeding

to close as a ‘no asset’ case and prevented early discussions of

settlement or abandonment by the Trustee.” 73 F. Supp. 3d at

11. The district court added that in Marshall’s amended

schedules, filed after the bankruptcy court reopened the case,

she listed for the first time her attorney as a secured creditor to

whom she owed “$150,000 Plus,” which the court said “reduced

the potential bankruptcy payout to other creditors.” Id.9

9

 Marshall’s amended Schedule D states that she incurred this debt

to attorney Myles on December 30, 2005, three months after she had

filed her bankruptcy petition seeking a discharge of pre-petition debts.” 

See 11 U.S.C. § 727(b) (providing that a discharge under Chapter 7

relieves the debtor “from all debts that arose before the date” the

bankruptcy petition was filed); see also Bethea v. Robert J. Adams &

Assocs., 352 F.3d 1125, 1128 (7th Cir. 2003). None of the parties have

addressed this subject and so we will not say anything further about it.

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Quoting our opinion in Moses, 606 F.3d at 800, the district

court concluded that “Marshall ‘offended the integrity of the

District Court’ by presenting herself as a proper party to this

Court based on a position that is flatly inconsistent with the

position she took in the bankruptcy proceedings.” 73 F. Supp. 3d

at 11. Of this there can be no doubt. In the nine years from

2005 until the district court issued summary judgment in 2014,

this lawsuit generated nearly 200 docket entries, the bulk of

which came before the defendants discovered Marshall’s

bankruptcy proceedings. During those years, motions,

memoranda, oppositions, replies, orders and judicial opinions

(two of which were published) mounted. A moment’s research

by Marshall’s counsel or by Marshall herself, see

Cannon-Stokes, 453 F.3d at 449, would have revealed that

during this extensive period of intense back and forth between

the parties Marshall had no standing to be a plaintiff. Years

later, after so much water spilled over the dam, the trustee, as

the sole party in interest, determined that it “would be difficult

. . . to attract new counsel, unfamiliar with the case, on a

contingency basis.” No new counsel entered an appearance for

the trustee.

As against this, Marshall argues that judicial estoppel

should not apply because she orally disclosed one of her three

discrimination claims to the trustee at the creditors’ meeting in

2005, and her attorney allegedly had a telephone conversation

with the trustee about the other two.10 The district court

10 Marshall also argues that she cured her false representations in

her 2005 bankruptcy schedules when she amended them in 2010, after

the bankruptcy court reopened her case. Moses forecloses this

argument: to accept the argument would be to lessen the needed

incentive for the debtor to provide complete and truthful information

at the outset and “would similarly diminish the [judicial estoppel]

doctrine’s ability to deter the debtor from pursuing claims in the

District Court to which he is not entitled.” 606 F.3d at 800. 

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rejected Marshall’s argument. For one thing, “oral disclosure

does not meet the requirements of the bankruptcy code.” Guay

v. Burack, 677 F.3d 10, 20-21 (1st Cir. 2012); see Jeffrey v.

Desmond, 70 F.3d 183, 187 (1st Cir. 1995); Vreugdenhill v.

Navistar Int’l Transp. Co., 950 F.2d 524, 526 (8th Cir. 1991).

For another, Marshall’s oral disclosure to the trustee did not

constitute notice to her creditors and could not correct the false

information she conveyed on her schedules. See Barger v. City

of Cartersville, 348 F.3d 1289, 1295 (11th Cir. 2003); but see

Matthews v. Potter, 316 Fed. App’x 518, 522-23 (7th Cir.

2009).11 The bankruptcy court’s September 2005 Notice to each

of Marshall’s creditors understandably treated her bankruptcy

petition as a “no asset case.” In the Explanations section of the

Notice, the following appeared: “There does not appear to be

any property available to the trustee to pay creditors. You

therefore should not file a proof of claim at this time.”

Bankruptcy Case No. 05-01448, ECF No. 13, at 2 (Bankr.

D.D.C. Sept. 27, 2005) (italics in original).

Creditors wishing to evaluate a debtor’s financial condition

commonly consult the on-line resource PACER (Public Access

to Court Electronic Records). The Internal Revenue Service –

one of Marshall’s creditors – instructs employees of its

insolvency units to do so. INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE,

INTERNAL REVENUE MANUAL 5.9.6.11.2 (2015). Any of

Marshall’s dozens of creditors who checked PACER in order to

11 In Matthews, the Seventh Circuit suggested that oral disclosure

was relevant, but the court did not imply that it was dispositive. The

court simply remanded for the district court to “make a factual

determination, by evidentiary hearing if necessary, regarding the

nature and extent of the disclosures [the debtor] made to the Chapter

7 trustee at the meeting of creditors,” and to decide whether judicial

estoppel was justified under all the circumstances of the case. 

Matthews, 316 Fed. App’x at 523.

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examine Marshall’s financial condition as revealed in her

bankruptcy petition and in her accompanying schedules would

have given up the chase. And because of her deception they

would have been entirely justified in doing so. 

This brings us to Marshall’s remaining argument. In New

Hampshire, the Supreme Court wrote: “We do not question that

it may be appropriate to resist application of judicial estoppel

when a party’s prior position was based on inadvertence or

mistake.” 532 U.S. at 753 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

To take advantage of the Supreme Court’s remark, Marshall

filed an affidavit stating that when she filed her bankruptcy

petition and schedules in 2005, “I had no knowledge that I was

required to list my discrimination administrative proceedings on

my bankruptcy petition schedules or on any financial

statements.” She tells us, as she told the district court, that her

failure to list her pending administrative claims resulted from

her “inadvertence or mistake.”12

 Relying on Moses, the district court rejected Marshall’s

argument. 73 F. Supp. 3d at 11. Moses held that a debtor could

not avoid judicial estoppel if he omitted his pending cause of

action but reported “pending lawsuits that, unlike the instant

case, reduced the overall value of his assets through wage

garnishment.” 606 F.3d at 800. For good reason, the district

court in this case determined that Marshall was in the same

12 For five years, from the filing of her bankruptcy petition in

2005 until March 2010, Marshall had a continuing duty to amend her

bankruptcy schedules to reflect her administrative complaints that 

ultimately formed the basis of this lawsuit. See Moses, 606 F.3d at

793; In re Coastal Plains, Inc., 179 F.3d 197, 208 (5th Cir. 1999). 

The trustee’s inquiries at the creditors’ meeting, as well as the

instructions on the bankruptcy schedules, were more than enough to

alert her of the need to do so.

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position as the plaintiff-debtor in Moses. On part 4 of

Marshall’s Statement of Financial Affairs – “Suits and

administrative proceedings” – she disclosed two civil actions

against her, both of which had gone to judgment,13 and an IRS

administrative proceeding she described as “Pending.”14 Each of

these three matters increased the negative net value of

Marshall’s estate. Although her separate charges against the

three defendants she later sued were then tied up in

administrative proceedings, she did not disclose them. Yet she

must have understood that administrative proceedings had to be

listed. Otherwise there is no explanation – Marshall offered none

– for her reporting in part 4 of her Statement of Financial Affairs

the IRS administrative proceeding. 

The instruction on the Statement of Financial Affairs was

clear enough: “List all suits and administrative proceedings to

which the debtor is or was a party within one year immediately

preceding the filing of this bankruptcy case.” Marshall

understood that her three pending discrimination claims were, as

she admitted in her affidavit, “administrative proceedings.” She

could not have overlooked these claims. Her attorney alleges

that in November 2005, she told the bankruptcy trustee that

Marshall’s pending EEOC claims for race and sex

discrimination and retaliation, “had a value of at least $100,000

. . . and [perhaps] more depending on what a jury might award

13 Both civil actions were in a Virginia court. Marshall listed one

as “Carydale vs Sandra McDougald.” On Marshall’s Schedule F

(Creditors Holding Unsecured Nonpriority Claims) she reported that

“Carydale Enterprises” had a claim against her for $2,572.47. The

other civil action was “State Department F[CU] vs Sandra

McDougald.” On her Schedule F she listed a debt to the “State

Department FCU” of $267.10.

14 On her Schedule E (Creditors Holding Unsecured Priority

Claims), Marshall listed the IRS as a creditor in the amount of $5,500.

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for punitive damages.” A few weeks later, Marshall filed an age

discrimination complaint in federal court seeking more than $2

million in damages. And when Marshall finally amended her

bankruptcy schedules in 2010 to include this lawsuit, she listed

its value as $1,000,000.

For all of these reasons, Judge Lamberth, the district judge

in this case, quite properly invoked judicial estoppel to grant

summary judgment in favor of the defendants. 

We could end our opinion here. Cases such as this one are

legion in the other circuits. So we add a few words about how

the courts of appeals have evaluated the frequent contentions of

bankruptcy debtors in light of the Supreme Court’s observation

– in a case that did not involve inadvertence or mistake – that “it

may be appropriate to resist judicial estoppel when a party’s

earlier position was based on inadvertence or mistake.” 532 U.S.

at 753 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Many courts of appeals have adopted the Fifth Circuit’s

statement that a “debtor’s failure to satisfy its statutory

disclosure duty is ‘inadvertent’ only when, in general, the debtor

either lacks knowledge of the undisclosed claims or has no

motive for their concealment.” In re Coastal Plains, Inc., 179

F.3d 197, 210 (5th Cir. 1999) (italics in original); see Barger,

348 F.3d at 1295-96; Browning v. Levy, 283 F.3d 761, 776 (6th

Cir. 2002); Eastman v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 493 F.3d 1151,

1157 (10th Cir. 2007). Others have found that evaluating

subjective motivations is difficult and the court can therefore

presume that a debtor has acted intentionally, unless there is

evidence otherwise. The Third Circuit, for example, has held

that if a debtor knowingly omits valuable assets from her

bankruptcy schedules, the court may infer that the omission was

not an innocent mistake. Krystal Cadillac-Oldsmobile GMC

Truck, Inc. v. Gen. Motors Corp., 337 F.3d 314, 321 (3d Cir.

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18

2003); see also Burnes v. Pemco Aeroplex, Inc., 291 F.3d 1282,

1287-88 (11th Cir. 2002). The Ninth Circuit, disagreeing, holds

that district courts must give weight to “the plaintiff’s subjective

intent when filling out and signing the bankruptcy schedules.”

Ah Quin v. Cty. of Kauai Dep’t of Transp., 733 F.3d 267, 277

(9th Cir. 2013).

We see no need to take sides in this debate, if indeed there

are discrete sides at all. In practice, even those courts of appeals

that have followed the Fifth Circuit’s lead have not been “as

rigid as one would expect” in practice. Ah Quin, 733 F.3d at

277. The Fifth Circuit itself has emphasized that judicial

estoppel requires a “holistic, fact-specific consideration of each

claim . . ..” Reed v. City of Arlington, 620 F.3d 477, 482 (5th

Cir. 2010), rev’d on other grounds en banc, 650 F.3d 571 (5th

Cir. 2011). The Eleventh Circuit has held that courts “must

always give due consideration to all of the circumstances of a

particular case . . ..” Barger, 348 F.3d at 1294. And the Seventh

Circuit, which has said that “subjective intent does not matter,”

Becker v. Verizon N., Inc., No. 06-2956, 2007 WL 1224039, at

*1 (7th Cir. Apr. 25, 2007), has also described judicial estoppel

as a “flexible equitable doctrine” that “does not lend itself to

rigid rules,” Grochocinski v. Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw, LLP,

719 F.3d 785, 796 (7th Cir. 2013).

The Supreme Court doubted that there is “any general

formulation of principle” that governs all cases involving

judicial estoppel. New Hampshire, 532 U.S. at 750. If some

courts of appeals have held otherwise – and we are not

convinced that they have – we disagree. Instead, as with many

matters that are left to the discretion of district courts, we

believe that it is better to wait until “a settled practice has

developed in cases of the type” and “the channel of discretion

ha[s] narrowed” organically. Henry J. Friendly, Indiscretion

About Discretion, 31 EMORY L.J. 747, 771-72 (1982). Our

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circuit has seen few cases involving judicial estoppel in

bankruptcy cases, and we are reluctant to made broad

pronouncements prematurely. Instead, we hold that considering

all of the relevant factors, the district court in this case did not

abuse its discretion.

Affirmed.

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1

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge, dissenting: I agree with most of 

what the majority says. Sandra Marshall may well have 

deliberately left her civil claims off her bankruptcy forms in 

an effort to conceal her assets from the bankruptcy court. Had 

she undisputedly done so, the district court would have been 

within its discretion to grant summary judgment on the basis 

of judicial estoppel, just as we affirmed in Moses v. Howard 

University Hospital, 606 F.3d 789 (D.C. Cir. 2010). But 

summary judgment is appropriate only if the defendants have 

shown that there is “no genuine issue as to any material fact.”

Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986). When 

making this determination, we view the evidence in its full 

context and in the light most favorable to Marshall, resolving 

“any doubts” as to the existence of a genuine issue for trial in 

her favor. McSurely v. McClellan, 697 F.2d 309, 321 (D.C. 

Cir. 1982). Because Marshall told the trustee about her civil 

claims, there is a genuine dispute over whether she lied or 

simply made a mistake on her bankruptcy forms. And because 

judicial estoppel is inappropriate in cases of mistake, whether 

she lied or made a mistake is material. Accordingly, I would 

hold that the district court abused its discretion by applying 

judicial estoppel to grant summary judgment against 

Marshall.

Judicial estoppel is an equitable remedy that we apply to 

prevent litigants from manipulating the judicial system. Its 

purpose is to “protect the integrity of the judicial process,” 

New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U.S. 742, 749-50 (2001) 

(quoting Edwards v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 690 F.2d 595, 598 

(6th Cir. 1982)), by “prevent[ing] parties from ‘playing fast 

and loose with the courts,’” id. at 750 (quoting Scarano v. 

Cent. R. Co., 203 F.2d 510, 513 (3d Cir. 1953)). This is why 

judicial estoppel “looks toward cold manipulation and not 

unthinking or confused blunder.” Konstantinidis v. Chen, 626 

F.2d 933, 939 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (quoting Johnson Serv. Co. v. 

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2

Transamerica Ins. Co., 485 F.2d 164, 175 (5th Cir. 1973)). 

The Supreme Court likewise instructs that judicial estoppel 

“may be [in]appropriate” when a party’s past 

misrepresentation “was based on inadvertence or mistake”

rather than a lie. New Hampshire, 532 U.S. at 753 (quoting 

John S. Clark Co. v. Faggert & Frieden, P.C., 65 F.3d 26, 29 

(4th Cir. 1995)). 

Accordingly, many of our sister circuits do not apply 

judicial estoppel when a party inadvertently omits information

from a bankruptcy filing. See, e.g., Spaine v. Cmty. Contacts, 

Inc., 756 F.3d 542, 547-48 (7th Cir. 2014); Ah Quin v. Cty. of 

Kauai Dep’t of Transp., 733 F.3d 267, 276-77 (9th Cir. 2013); 

Stephenson v. Malloy, 700 F.3d 265, 275 (6th Cir. 2012); 

Ryan Operations G.P. v. Santiam-Midwest Lumber Co., 81 

F.3d 355, 364 (3d Cir. 1996). We have never disagreed with 

this approach. The majority relies heavily on our decision in 

Moses, but that case is fully consistent with our longstanding 

refusal to apply judicial estoppel to “unthinking or confused” 

litigants who neither manipulate the judicial system nor 

threaten the integrity of the judicial process. Konstantinidis, 

626 F.2d at 939 (quoting Johnson, 485 F.2d at 175). Moses

involved a plaintiff who selectively disclosed his liabilities, 

concealed his assets, and offered no evidence to support his 

claim that he made a mistake, much less evidence as 

probative as an oral disclosure to the trustee. In short, the 

plaintiff in Moses did not present a genuine issue as to 

whether he made a mistake on his bankruptcy forms.

The majority does not dispute that judicial estoppel is 

inappropriate in cases of mistake. But the majority improperly

limits the evidence that it considers in evaluating whether 

Marshall made a mistake. It concludes that Marshall lied to 

the bankruptcy court solely because she disclosed her 

liabilities (cases in which she was a defendant) on her 

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3

bankruptcy forms yet concealed her assets (cases in which she 

was a plaintiff). But this conclusion overlooks Marshall’s oral 

disclosure, which suggests she made a mistake on her forms. 

Instead, the majority treats Marshall’s oral disclosure as 

wholly unrelated to her claim of mistake, concluding simply 

that an oral disclosure to the trustee neither satisfies the 

bankruptcy code’s requirements nor provides notice to 

creditors. Nowhere does the majority acknowledge that 

Marshall’s oral disclosure might also bear on whether she 

made a mistake on her written forms.

The district court likewise never considered Marshall’s 

oral disclosure as relevant evidence when it concluded that 

she lied to the bankruptcy court. Marshall pointed out that 

were she “trying to escape liability,” she “would not have 

disclosed” her assets to the trustee during their meeting. Br. 

for Pl. in Opp’n to Summ. J. at 17, Marshall v. Honeywell 

Tech. Sys., Inc., 73 F. Supp. 3d 5 (D.D.C. 2014). But the 

district court acknowledged her oral disclosure to the trustee 

only to conclude that it “did not relieve her of the obligation 

to provide complete information in her Bankruptcy Petition.” 

Marshall, 73 F. Supp. 3d at 10. And when evaluating 

Marshall’s claim that she made a mistake on her forms, the 

district court never mentioned her oral disclosure, finding that 

she lied solely because she disclosed her liabilities yet 

concealed her assets. Id. at 11. 

But it is wrong to evaluate Marshall’s oral disclosure and 

her claim that she made a mistake on her forms as wholly 

separate issues. See Aka v. Wash. Hosp. Ctr., 156 F.3d 1284, 

1290 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (en banc) (explaining that at summary 

judgment, “the court must consider all the evidence in its full 

context”). Instead, her oral disclosure is evidence that she 

never lied at all. Marshall voluntarily told the trustee about 

her assets, and that fact, viewed in the light most favorable to 

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Marshall, suggests she was not trying to hide anything, 

notwithstanding what she left off her forms. Thus, like the 

Sixth and Seventh Circuits, I would hold that a debtor’s oral 

disclosure to the trustee is material evidence of mistake and 

would accordingly reverse the grant of summary judgment. 

See Stephenson, 700 F.3d at 275 (reversing grant of summary 

judgment, reasoning that an oral disclosure to the trustee 

suggests no “intent to hide” a claim); Spaine, 756 F.3d at 547 

(“Spaine’s disclosure made the trustee aware of the litigation, 

and the trustee made a decision about its value to her 

creditors. That testimony protects Spaine from an inference 

on summary judgment that she deliberately concealed her 

claim from the bankruptcy trustee and her creditors.”). But see 

Guay v. Burack, 677 F.3d 10, 19-20 & n.7 (1st Cir. 2012).

This straightforward approach to mistake is particularly 

appropriate in the bankruptcy context, where “[h]onest 

mistakes and oversights are not unheard of.” Spaine, 756 F.3d 

at 548. Indeed, a major reason that trustees meet with debtors 

in the first place is to prevent inadvertent errors on bankruptcy 

forms, which are often filled out by people like Marshall who 

have little knowledge of the legal system. See id. The 

bankruptcy code clearly anticipates that mistakes might 

happen; it requires trustees to investigate debtors’ financial 

affairs and meet with them to talk about their assets and 

liabilities, 11 U.S.C. §§ 341, 704(a)(4), and the Federal Rules 

of Bankruptcy Procedure allow amendments to initial filings, 

Fed. R. Bankr. P. 1009(a).

Furthermore, I see little to be gained by jumping to the 

conclusion that Marshall lied. When we apply judicial 

estoppel based on bankruptcy omissions, the costs primarily 

fall not on the plaintiff, but on her creditors, who might 

otherwise recover assets from successful lawsuits. See Biesek 

v. Soo Line R.R. Co., 440 F.3d 410, 413 (7th Cir. 2006); Ah 

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Quin, 733 F.3d at 276 (“If Plaintiff’s bankruptcy omission 

was mistaken, the application of judicial estoppel in this case 

would do nothing to protect the integrity of the courts, would 

enure to the benefit only of an alleged bad actor, and would 

eliminate any prospect that Plaintiff’s unsecured creditors 

might have of recovering.”). Here, the defendant corporations, 

who are accused of unlawful conduct, will get a windfall at 

the expense of Marshall’s creditors, who are accused of 

nothing at all. 

Nor would it rewrite the bankruptcy code to acknowledge

that sometimes debtors make mistakes on their bankruptcy 

forms. To be sure, Marshall had a “duty” to disclose potential 

claims on her bankruptcy forms and to amend those forms 

when she filed suit. Moses, 606 F.3d at 793. She violated the 

bankruptcy code by failing to do so. But this fact, without 

more, does not answer the question before us: whether 

Marshall’s noncompliance with the bankruptcy code warrants 

the application of judicial estoppel in her current lawsuit. 

Judicial estoppel is appropriate only if Marshall’s failure was 

deliberate, and not merely because she violated her duty to 

disclose. See Ryan Operations, 81 F.3d at 364 (“[T]he 

requisite intent for judicial estoppel [cannot] be inferred from 

the mere fact of nondisclosure in a bankruptcy proceeding.”);

see also Moses, 606 F.3d at 798 (recognizing that courts of 

appeals generally apply judicial estoppel when a debtor 

“deliberately” fails to disclose her pending suit in an earlier 

bankruptcy case).

I agree with the majority that Marshall’s selective written 

disclosures suggest she lied on her forms. But her oral 

disclosure to the trustee points in the other direction. This is 

precisely the type of genuine dispute of material fact that the 

district court should not have resolved at summary judgment.

However, the majority expressly declines to set a rule 

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6

dictating how the district court is to evaluate claims of 

mistake and takes no stance on the role of an oral disclosure 

in this calculus. Thus, I do not read the majority opinion to 

limit the ability of a district court to consider a debtor’s oral 

disclosure as evidence of mistake in a future case. 

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