Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-23-55259/USCOURTS-ca9-23-55259-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Cashcall, Inc.
Appellant
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Appellee
Delbert Services Corporation
Appellant
J. Paul Reddam
Appellant
WS Funding, LLC
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

CONSUMER FINANCIAL 

PROTECTION BUREAU, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

CASHCALL, INC.; WS FUNDING, 

LLC; DELBERT SERVICES 

CORPORATION; J. PAUL 

REDDAM, 

Defendants-Appellants.

No. 23-55259 

D.C. No. 

2:15-cv-07522-

JFW-RAO 

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

John F. Walter, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted March 20, 2024

San Francisco, California

Filed January 3, 2025

Before: John B. Owens, Ryan D. Nelson, and Eric D. 

Miller, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Miller;

Concurrence by Judge R. Nelson

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2 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 

SUMMARY*

Seventh Amendment / Restitution Award

The panel affirmed the district court’s judgment, on 

remand from this court, ordering CashCall, Inc. to pay more 

than $134 million in legal restitution.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau brought an 

action alleging that CashCall had engaged in an “unfair, 

deceptive, or abusive act or practice” in violation of 12 

U.S.C. § 5536(a)(1)(B), by attempting to collect interest and 

fees to which it was not legally entitled. In this appeal, 

CashCall primarily contended that the district court’s order 

of legal restitution triggered its Seventh Amendment right to 

a jury trial.

Assuming without deciding that CashCall had a Seventh 

Amendment right to a jury trial, the panel concluded that it 

had waived that right. CashCall made an express, knowing, 

and voluntary waiver of its right to trial by jury. Although 

CashCall contended that it waived its jury trial right only in 

reliance on the Bureau’s incorrect characterization of the 

relief it was seeking as equitable, rather than legal, CashCall 

was not confused about the substance of that relief, and a 

party need not demonstrate a correct understanding of the 

law for its waiver to be effective. After CashCall voluntarily 

participated in the first bench trial, it did not object to the 

second bench trial, and even if it had, an objection on remand 

could not have revived its jury right. 

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has 

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 3 

The panel held that the district court did not abuse its 

discretion in concluding that the doctrines of judicial 

estoppel and waiver did not preclude the Bureau from 

seeking an award of legal restitution. Also, the district court 

did not overstate CashCall’s unjust gains. The district court 

properly used CashCall’s net revenues as a basis for 

measuring unjust gains. Finally, the panel rejected 

CashCall’s contention that the Bureau’s statutory funding 

mechanism is inconsistent with the Appropriations Clause.

Concurring, Judge R. Nelson agreed that CashCall 

waived any Seventh Amendment jury trial right on the 

Bureau’s claims for restitution. But even if CashCall had not 

waived a jury, it still would have not been entitled to one 

under FTC v. Commerce Planet, Inc., 815 F.3d 593, 602 (9th 

Cir. 2016), abrogated on other grounds by AMG Cap. 

Mgmt., LLC v. FTC, 593 U.S. 67 (2021), which diluted the 

jury trial right, and which this court should reconsider en 

banc.

COUNSEL

Kevin E. Friedl (argued), Senior Counsel; Kristin Bateman, 

Assistant General Counsel; Steven Y. Bressler, Deputy 

General Counsel; Seth Frotman, General Counsel; 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Washington, D.C.; 

Owen P. Martikan, Assistant United States Attorney; 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, San Francisco, 

California; for Plaintiff-Appellee.

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4 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 

Paul D. Clement (argued), Joseph J. DeMott, and Matthew 

D. Rowen, Clement & Murphy PLLC, Alexandria, Virginia; 

Reuben C. Cahn and Gregory M. Sergi, Keller Anderle LLP, 

Irvine, California; Thomas J. Nolan, Law Office of Thomas 

J. Nolan, Pasadena, California; for Defendants-Appellants.

OPINION

MILLER, Circuit Judge: 

CashCall, Inc., a consumer lender, returns to us 

following our remand to the district court in a prior appeal. 

See CFPB v. CashCall, Inc. (CashCall I), 35 F.4th 734 (9th 

Cir. 2022). Last time, we agreed with the Bureau that 

CashCall had engaged in an “unfair, deceptive, or abusive 

act or practice,” in violation of 12 U.S.C. § 5536(a)(1)(B), 

by attempting to collect interest and fees to which it was not 

legally entitled. 35 F.4th at 743–47. We also held that the 

district court’s order denying restitution rested on a legal 

error, so we vacated and remanded for further proceedings.

Id. at 749. On remand, the district court ordered CashCall to 

pay more than $134 million in legal restitution. 

CashCall appeals again. Its primary contention is that the 

district court’s order of legal restitution triggered its Seventh 

Amendment right to a jury trial. But CashCall waived that 

right during the initial district court proceedings, in which it 

voluntarily participated in a bench trial. Because CashCall’s 

other challenges to the district court’s order also lack merit, 

we affirm. 

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 5

I

CashCall is a California corporation that makes 

unsecured, high-interest loans to consumers. See generally 

CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 738–40. In an effort to expand its 

operations to other States while avoiding state usury laws, it 

set up a lender incorporated under the laws of the Cheyenne 

River Sioux Tribe. That lender issued loans whose terms

included choice-of-law provisions stating that they would be 

governed by tribal law. CashCall then purchased the loans 

and collected payments from consumers.

The Bureau believed that CashCall’s attempts to collect 

payments were illegal because the loans—including the 

choice-of-law provisions—were invalid under state law, so 

they did not create legally enforceable obligations. In 2013, 

the Bureau brought an enforcement action against CashCall, 

its CEO, and several affiliated companies, alleging that 

CashCall’s lending scheme was an “unfair, deceptive, or 

abusive act or practice,” in violation of 12 U.S.C. 

§ 5536(a)(1)(B). CashCall filed an answer to the complaint,

in which it demanded a jury trial.

Thereafter, the district court granted partial summary 

judgment to the Bureau on liability, and, after the parties 

filed a joint status report stating that they “agreed to waive 

their right to a jury,” the court conducted a bench trial to 

determine the appropriate remedy. In addition to a civil 

penalty, the Bureau sought restitution in the amount of the 

total interest and fees paid on the void loans. The district 

court imposed a civil penalty of $10.3 million but declined 

to order restitution. CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 738.

Both sides appealed. CashCall contested the finding of 

liability, and the Bureau argued that the civil penalty should 

have been larger and that it was entitled to restitution.

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6 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 738. While the appeal was pending, 

the Supreme Court decided Liu v. SEC, in which it surveyed 

principles of equity jurisprudence and explained that “equity 

practice long authorized courts to strip wrongdoers of their 

ill-gotten gains” but “restricted the remedy to an individual 

wrongdoer’s net profits.” 591 U.S. 71, 79 (2020). In the 

wake of Liu, CashCall argued that because the Bureau had 

sought equitable restitution, any award of restitution would 

have to be limited to its net profits. Despite having

previously characterized the restitution it sought as 

equitable, the Bureau responded by asserting that “in 

substance the restitution that we . . . sought here was legal 

restitution, not equitable restitution.”

We affirmed the district court’s finding of liability but 

vacated the civil penalty and remanded with instructions for

the district court to impose a higher penalty based on a 

determination that CashCall had acted recklessly. CashCall

I, 35 F.4th at 749. We also vacated the denial of restitution, 

holding that the district court had relied on impermissible 

considerations in denying restitution. We expressly declined 

to resolve “whether the Bureau has waived a claim to legal 

restitution or how, if at all, Liu might limit equitable 

restitution.” Id. at 750. Instead, we left those issues for the 

district court to consider on remand. Id.

On remand, the parties disputed whether the district 

court could order legal as opposed to equitable restitution. 

As it had argued in this court, the Bureau insisted that “the 

nature of the restitutionary remedy that [it] has sought 

throughout this lawsuit is legal” because it sought only the 

return of “consumer losses, measured by the interest and fees 

that CashCall had illegally collected.” CashCall replied that, 

based on what the Bureau said during the initial proceedings, 

the court could award only equitable restitution, and that an 

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 7

award in excess of net profits is “beyond a court’s equitable 

powers and necessarily then implicates a defendant’s 

Seventh Amendment rights.” But CashCall did not object to 

a bench trial, nor did it challenge the validity of the jury-trial 

waiver that it had made during the initial proceedings before 

the district court.

The district court determined that the Bureau was not 

precluded from seeking legal restitution, explaining that

whether relief “qualifies as legal or equitable depends not on 

the [Bureau]’s characterization, but rather on the nature of 

the underlying remedies sought.” The district court reasoned

that the Bureau “has continuously sought, what by its nature 

is, legal restitution.” And it concluded that “[b]ecause the 

Supreme Court’s decision in Liu did not purport to limit the 

scope of legal restitution,” it was unnecessary to “limit the 

restitution in this case to net profits.” 

The district court then applied this court’s two-step 

burden-shifting framework to calculate the restitution award. 

CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 751. Under that framework, the 

Bureau “bears the burden of proving that the amount it seeks 

in restitution reasonably approximates the defendant’s 

unjust gains.” Id. (quoting CFPB v. Gordon, 819 F.3d 1179, 

1195 (9th Cir. 2016)). If the Bureau makes such a showing, 

then “the burden shifts to the defendant to demonstrate that 

the net revenues figure overstates the defendant’s unjust 

gains.” Id. (quoting Gordon, 819 F.3d at 1195).

At step one, the district court concluded that the Bureau 

had “met its initial burden.” After deducting payments

CashCall had already made to consumers in state 

proceedings, the court concluded that CashCall’s unjust 

gains could reasonably be approximated as $197 million. At 

step two, however, the district court found that CashCall had 

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8 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

shown that this figure overstated its unjust gains. The 

amount of restitution, the court explained, “should not 

include the interest and fees paid by any consumer who paid 

CashCall less than that consumer received in principal.” 

After making the necessary adjustments, the district court 

ordered CashCall to pay more than $134 million in 

restitution. Because “[r]estitution may be measured by the 

‘full amount lost by consumers rather than limiting damages 

to a defendant’s profits,’” the court declined to deduct any 

expenses that CashCall incurred in administering its lending 

scheme. CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 751 (alteration in original)

(quoting Gordon, 819 F.3d at 1195).

II

The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to a jury 

trial “[i]n Suits at common law, where the value in 

controversy shall exceed twenty dollars.” U.S. Const. 

amend. VII. “In construing this language,” the Supreme 

Court has “noted that the right is not limited to the ‘commonlaw forms of action recognized’ when the Seventh 

Amendment was ratified.” SEC v. Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. 2117, 

2128 (2024) (quoting Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 193 

(1974)). The right to a jury trial “extends to a particular 

statutory claim if the claim is ‘legal in nature,’” considered

in light of “the cause of action and the remedy it provides.” 

Id. at 2128–29 (quoting Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg, 

492 U.S. 33, 53 (1989)). “[T]he remedy [is] the ‘more 

important’ consideration.” Id. at 2129 (quoting Tull v. 

United States, 481 U.S. 412, 421 (1987)); see also FTC v. 

Commerce Planet, Inc., 815 F.3d 593, 602 (9th Cir. 2016), 

abrogated on other grounds by AMG Cap. Mgmt., LLC v. 

FTC, 593 U.S. 67 (2021).

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 9

The parties debate whether this case involves legal 

remedies that are within the scope of the Seventh 

Amendment guarantee. Our precedent suggests that the 

answer is no: In Commerce Planet, we stated that “restitution 

is an equitable remedy for Seventh Amendment purposes, 

without drawing any distinction between the legal and 

equitable forms of that relief”—in other words, no form of 

restitution triggers the right to a jury trial. 815 F.3d at 602. 

But CashCall argues that Commerce Planet does not apply 

outside of its specific statutory context (the Federal Trade 

Commission Act) and, in any event, that it has been 

abrogated by more recent decisions of the Supreme Court, 

including Liu. We need not resolve that debate here. Instead, 

assuming without deciding that CashCall had a Seventh 

Amendment right to a jury trial, we conclude that it waived 

that right.

Like other constitutional rights, the Seventh Amendment 

right can be waived. United States v. Moore, 340 U.S. 616, 

621 (1951). To be valid, a waiver “must be made knowingly 

and voluntarily based on the facts of the case.” Palmer v. 

Valdez, 560 F.3d 965, 968 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Tracinda 

Corp. v. DaimlerChrysler AG, 502 F.3d 212, 222 (3d Cir. 

2007)).

Here, CashCall made an express, knowing, and 

voluntary waiver of its right to trial by jury. At the pretrial 

hearing, the Bureau stated that it intended to “seek restitution 

of interest and fees.” The Bureau explained that such an 

award would be “an equitable remedy that, unless the Court 

wanted to give it to an advisory jury, . . . would be the 

Court’s remedy to decide,” adding that, based on the 

Bureau’s “discussion with defense counsel,” the parties 

“would be willing to waive [a] jury for any further 

proceedings.” For its part, CashCall stated that it “generally 

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10 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

agree[d] with everything that [the Bureau] has represented 

to the Court.” The district court said, “I don’t know and I 

haven’t done the research to know whether or not [CashCall

is] entitled to a jury trial,” and it requested a joint status 

report setting out the parties’ position on a jury-trial waiver. 

That joint status report stated, in no uncertain terms, that 

“[t]he parties have agreed to waive their right to a jury and 

proceed with a bench trial to determine the appropriate relief, 

should trial be necessary.”

Thereafter, in a supplemental brief, the Bureau again

explained the nature of the remedy that it sought: It believed 

that “[r]estitution of the full amount lost by 

consumers [was] necessary to achieve complete 

justice . . . because [CashCall’s] deceptive conduct caused 

consumers to pay interest and fees on loans that were legally 

void.” According to the Bureau, that meant that consumers 

“are all entitled to restitution based on the total amount of 

interest and fees paid.” CashCall responded by contesting

the Bureau’s calculation methodology, arguing that the 

proposed restitution “calculation would create an

impermissible windfall for” borrowers who defaulted or paid 

less in interest and fees than they received in loan funds.

Further, CashCall argued that the Bureau was seeking “an 

equitable monetary award” that did “not account for the 

expenses incurred by CashCall to run” its lending program—

which, in CashCall’s view, inappropriately transformed the 

proposed remedy into a punitive sanction. See 12 U.S.C. 

§ 5565(a)(3) (disallowing punitive damages).

At no point before trial did CashCall suggest that it was 

entitled to a jury trial or seek to withdraw its waiver. The

case proceeded to a bench trial, in which CashCall 

participated without objection.

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 11

CashCall does not dispute that it waived its jury trial 

right but insists that it did so only in reliance on the Bureau’s 

statements that the Bureau was seeking equitable restitution. 

As subsequent developments in the law have revealed, the 

Bureau’s characterization of the remedy it sought was 

incorrect.

Restitution may be either legal or equitable, and 

“whether it is legal or equitable depends on ‘the basis for [the 

plaintiff’s] claim’ and the nature of the underlying remedies 

sought.” Great-West Life & Annuity Ins. Co. v. Knudson, 534 

U.S. 204, 213 (2002) (alteration in original) (quoting Reich 

v. Continental Cas. Co., 33 F.3d 754, 756 (7th Cir. 1994)).

In general, “restitution is legal when the plaintiff cannot 

‘assert title or right to possession of particular property,’” but 

it “is equitable ‘where money or property identified as 

belonging in good conscience to the plaintiff could clearly 

be traced to particular funds or property in the defendant’s 

possession.’” CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 750 (quoting GreatWest Life, 534 U.S. at 213).

In Liu, which was decided during the pendency of the 

first appeal in this case, the Supreme Court acknowledged 

that “[e]quity courts have routinely deprived wrongdoers of 

their net profits from unlawful activity, even though that 

remedy may have gone by different names.” 591 U.S. at 79.

But, the Court explained, traditional principles of equity do 

not permit “an equitable remedy in excess of a defendant’s 

net profits from wrongdoing.” Id. at 85. Although the Court 

made that statement in the context of disgorgement, we agree

with the Seventh Circuit that “Liu’s reasoning is not limited 

to disgorgement; instead, the opinion purports to set forth a 

rule applicable to all categories of equitable relief, including 

restitution.” CFPB v. Consumer First Legal Grp., LLC, 6 

F.4th 694, 710 (7th Cir. 2021).

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12 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

Liu suggests that the Bureau was incorrect to 

characterize the restitution it sought as equitable. Instead, 

because that restitution was not limited to CashCall’s net 

profits and did not seek “to restore to the [consumers] 

particular funds or property in [CashCall]’s possession,” it 

was more properly characterized as legal. Great-West Life, 

534 U.S. at 214.

The Bureau’s error was perhaps understandable because 

the Supreme Court had not “previously drawn [a] fine 

distinction between restitution at law and restitution in 

equity.” Great-West Life, 534 U.S. at 214. More importantly, 

it was a legal error shared by both parties: CashCall told the 

district court that it “generally agree[d] with everything” the 

Bureau had said about the remedy it was seeking—including 

that it would be “an equitable remedy that . . . would be the 

Court’s remedy to decide.” And CashCash separately told 

the district court that it understood the Bureau to be seeking 

“an equitable monetary award.” It made those statements not 

because it was confused about the substance of the relief the 

Bureau was seeking—restitution in the form of the “total 

amount of interest and fees paid” by consumers on invalid 

loans—but because it shared the Bureau’s mistaken 

understanding of the appropriate characterization of that 

relief. (Of course, it may also have made a strategic 

judgment that, having been found liable for employing 

deceptive practices to victimize thousands of consumers, it 

might fare poorly before a jury.)

CashCall’s waiver was valid even if CashCall would not 

have made it absent the parties’ mistaken characterization of 

the relief the Bureau sought. We have never held that a 

party’s legal error can vitiate its waiver of a jury-trial right, 

or that a party must demonstrate a correct understanding of 

the law for its waiver to be effective. Such a rule would be 

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 13

inconsistent with the settled understanding that a party can 

waive the right to a jury trial simply by doing nothing: 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 38 provides that a party who 

wants a jury trial must demand one in writing “no later than 

14 days after the last pleading directed to the issue is served,” 

and that “[a] party waives a jury trial unless its demand is 

properly served and filed.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 38. Applying that 

rule, we have held that “‘oversight or inadvertence,’” 

including “a good faith mistake of law,” does not excuse the 

failure to make a timely jury-trial demand. Zivkovic v. 

Southern Cal. Edison Co., 302 F.3d 1080, 1086 (9th Cir. 

2002) (quoting Pacific Fisheries Corp. v. HIH Cas. & Gen. 

Ins., Ltd., 239 F.3d 1000, 1002 (9th Cir. 2001)). And even 

after a party complies with Rule 38, its “knowing 

participation in a bench trial without objection is sufficient 

to constitute a jury waiver.” Palmer, 560 F.3d at 968 

(quoting White v. McGinnis, 903 F.2d 699, 703 (9th Cir. 

1990) (en banc)).

CashCall invokes Connolly v. United States, in which we 

held that the defendants were entitled to a new trial after they 

waived a jury and then, for the first time in closing argument, 

the government said that it was seeking a statutory penalty. 

149 F.2d 666, 668 (9th Cir. 1945). We explained that the 

defendants “could not waive their right to a jury trial on a 

law point not in issue.” Id. at 669. That rule does not help

CashCall, which was aware all along of the relief that the 

Bureau was seeking but simply misunderstood how the 

Seventh Amendment might apply to it. An effective waiver 

requires only that a party “knowingly and voluntarily” waive 

its jury-trial right “based on the facts of the case.” Palmer, 

560 F.3d at 968 (emphasis added) (quoting Tracinda Corp., 

502 F.3d at 222). CashCall did so here.

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14 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

After CashCall voluntarily participated in the first bench 

trial, an objection on remand could not have revived its jury 

right. See 9 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, 

Federal Practice & Procedure § 2321, at 334 (4th ed. 2020) 

(“Once the opportunity to demand a jury trial has been 

waived, the right is not revived by a reversal on appeal or by 

the grant of a new trial.”). But even on remand—after Liu

had been decided, after the Bureau reiterated that the relief 

it sought was the return of “consumer losses, measured by 

the interest and fees that CashCall had illegally collected,” 

and after the Bureau expressly denied that it “sought 

equitable relief such as the return of particular funds or 

property . . . or disgorgement of profits, or an accounting for

profits”—CashCall still did not demand a jury trial or 

otherwise object to participating in the second bench trial. At 

oral argument in this appeal, when asked about the position

it took on remand, CashCall answered that it had demanded 

a jury trial “in sort of a back-handed way” by arguing that an 

award in excess of net profits would implicate its Seventh 

Amendment rights. That argument was both too little and too 

late to undo CashCall’s waiver.

III

CashCall also contends that the doctrines of judicial 

estoppel and waiver should have precluded the Bureau from 

seeking an award of legal restitution. According to CashCall, 

because the Bureau initially said that it wanted an award of 

equitable restitution, it is estopped from seeking—or has 

waived any entitlement to—an award of legal restitution.

The district court rejected both theories, and we review its 

decision for abuse of discretion. See Arizona v. Tohono

O’odham Nation, 818 F.3d 549, 558 (9th Cir. 2016) (judicial 

estoppel); Gordon, 819 F.3d at 1187 (waiver). We see none.

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 15

Judicial estoppel is an equitable doctrine based on the 

principle that, once a party takes a certain position, it “may 

not thereafter . . . assume a contrary position, especially if it 

be to the prejudice of the party who has acquiesced in the 

position formerly taken by him.” New Hampshire v. Maine, 

532 U.S. 742, 749 (2001) (quoting Davis v. Wakelee, 156 

U.S. 680, 689 (1895)). The Supreme Court has set out three

factors to guide courts in applying the doctrine. First, a 

“party’s later position must be ‘clearly inconsistent’ with its 

earlier position.” Id. at 750 (quoting United States v. Hook, 

195 F.3d 299, 306 (7th Cir. 1999)). Second, the court should 

consider “whether the party has succeeded in persuading a 

court to accept that party’s earlier position, so 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. (quoting Edwards v. Aetna Life Ins.

Co., 690 F.2d 595, 599 (6th Cir. 1982)). And third, the court 

should determine “whether the party seeking to assert an 

inconsistent position would derive an unfair advantage or 

impose an unfair detriment on the opposing party if not 

estopped.” Id. at 751. 

None of those factors favors CashCall for the simple 

reason that the Bureau’s position has remained consistent 

throughout this case. The district court recognized that the 

Bureau had indeed labeled its preferred remedy as 

“equitable” throughout the initial proceedings. But it also 

noted that whether the relief being sought was equitable or 

legal “depends not on the [Bureau’s] characterization, but 

rather on the nature of the underlying remedies sought.” That 

was correct. The Supreme Court in Liu warned against

“elevat[ing] form over substance” in distinguishing between 

legal and equitable remedies. 591 U.S. at 76 n.1 (quoting 

Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila, 542 U.S. 200, 214 (2004)). And 

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16 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

here, the nature of the remedy is—and always has been—

legal restitution: a money judgment to compensate 

borrowers for the money that CashCall collected but

borrowers did not owe.

For much the same reason, CashCall’s waiver argument 

fails as well. The Bureau has consistently asserted its right 

to the same remedy. It did not waive the right to seek that 

remedy simply because it—like CashCall—attached the 

wrong label to that remedy during the initial proceedings 

below.

IV

CashCall argues that even if some award of legal 

restitution was appropriate, the district court overstated

CashCall’s unjust gains. The basis of its argument is that the 

district court’s award of $134 million does not restore 

consumers to the status quo because some consumers who 

received loans did not repay all the principal they received 

from CashCall. Those unpaid amounts were reflected on 

CashCall’s ledgers as a loss of $93 million—a loss that 

CashCall insists should be deducted from any award of 

restitution. 

We have stated that restitution awards are reviewed for 

abuse of discretion, see CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 749, but we 

have not specifically addressed the standard for legal 

restitution. CashCall argues that such awards are subject to 

de novo review. Assuming without deciding that de novo 

review applies, we conclude that CashCall’s argument fails 

nonetheless. 

As we have explained, equitable remedies must be 

capped at net profits—meaning that “courts must deduct [a 

defendant’s] legitimate expenses” from any award of 

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 17

equitable restitution. Liu, 591 U.S. at 91; see also Consumer 

First, 6 F.4th at 710. But the same is not true of legal 

restitution, in which a plaintiff seeks to recover a defendant’s 

unjust gains. See Great-West Life, 534 U.S. at 213 

(explaining that restitution at law allows a plaintiff to 

“recover[] money to pay for some benefit the defendant had 

received from him” (quoting 1 Dan B. Dobbs, Dobbs Law of 

Remedies § 4.2(1), at 571 (2d ed. 1993))). Legal

“[r]estitution may be measured by the ‘full amount lost by 

consumers rather than limiting damages to a defendant’s 

profits.’” CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 751 (quoting Gordon, 819 

F.3d at 1195). That means that a “district court may use a

defendant’s net revenues as a basis for measuring unjust 

gains.” Id. (quoting Gordon, 819 F.3d at 1195). 

That is exactly what the district court did here. At step 

one of the two-step burden-shifting framework set out in 

Gordon, it found that the Bureau had met its initial burden 

of demonstrating “a reasonable approximation of 

[CashCall’s] unjust gains, i.e., net revenues.” After 

deducting amounts CashCall had already paid in state 

enforcement actions, the district court concluded that the 

Bureau could request $197 million. The burden then shifted 

to CashCall to prove that this overstated its unjust gains—a 

burden that the district court concluded CashCall met. See 

CashCall I, 35 F.4th at 751. The Bureau had argued that the 

restitution award should include any interest and fees paid 

by any consumer, including those who paid CashCall less 

than what they received in the form of loan principal. This 

amount would be in addition to the interest and fees that 

other consumers paid in excess of the amount of loan 

principal CashCall disbursed to them. The district court 

agreed with CashCall’s challenge to that approach, noting 

our statement in the prior appeal: “Restitution . . . serves to 

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18 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

ensure that consumers are made whole,” not to grant them a 

windfall. Id. at 750 (emphasis added). But the district court 

also concluded that it did not need to deduct anything else, 

including CashCall’s expenses.

CashCall now argues that this was error. It insists that the 

district court should have deducted “the initial outlays of 

loan principal” that CashCall disbursed to consumers but 

which some consumers never fully repaid—an amount 

totaling $93 million. But deducting the $93 million in unpaid 

principal would serve to deduct one of CashCall’s expenses, 

which is necessary only when restitution is awarded in 

equity, not at law. See Liu, 591 U.S. at 91–92. Furthermore, 

the amount of unjust gains that CashCall received from 

consumers who paid more than they got in loan proceeds has 

nothing to do with the success or failure of CashCall’s 

dealings with other borrowers. If CashCall had $100 in 

unjust gains from a transaction with consumer A, it should 

pay $100 in restitution. It should not get away with paying 

less just because it lost $50 in a separate transaction with 

consumer B.

A restitution award “should be measured to reflect the 

substantive law purpose that calls for restitution in the first 

place.” Restatement (Third) of Restitution and Unjust 

Enrichment § 49, Comment a (2011) (quoting 1 Dobbs 

§ 4.5(1), at 629). Here, one of the purposes of the statute is 

“to ensure that ‘consumers are protected from unfair, 

deceptive, or abusive acts and practices.’” CashCall I, 35 

F.4th at 750 (quoting 12 U.S.C. § 5511(b)(2)). The reduction 

in the award that CashCall seeks would frustrate that purpose

by ensuring that borrowers who paid CashCall more than 

they received are not made whole.

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 19

V 

Finally, CashCall contends that all the Bureau’s actions 

in this case were unlawful because the Bureau does not 

receive annual appropriations from Congress but instead is 

authorized to draw from the Federal Reserve System 

whatever amount it deems “reasonably necessary to carry 

out” its duties, a funding scheme that CashCall says violates 

the Appropriations Clause. 12 U.S.C. § 5497(a)(1); U.S. 

Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7. That argument is squarely foreclosed 

by recent Supreme Court precedent holding that the 

Bureau’s statutory funding mechanism is consistent with the 

Appropriations Clause. See CFPB v. Community Fin. Servs. 

Ass’n of Am., Ltd., 601 U.S. 416, 421 (2024). 

AFFIRMED.

R. NELSON, Circuit Judge, concurring: 

I agree that CashCall, Inc. waived any Seventh 

Amendment right to a jury trial on the Consumer Financial 

Protection Bureau’s claims for restitution. Op. at 9–10. But 

even if CashCall had not waived a jury, it still would not 

have been entitled to one under our precedent. In FTC v. 

Commerce Planet, Inc., we held that claims for restitution, 

even when understood as actions at law, never trigger the 

Seventh Amendment’s guarantee. 815 F.3d 593, 602 (9th 

Cir. 2016), abrogated on other grounds by AMG Cap. 

Mgmt., LLC v. FTC, 593 U.S. 67 (2021); see U.S. Const. 

amend. VII (“preserv[ing]” the right to trial by jury “[i]n 

Suits at common law”). Commerce Planet was wrong the 

day it was decided. And its flaws have become even clearer 

since. I write separately to explain why Commerce Planet

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20 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

dilutes the jury trial right, and why, in the appropriate case, 

we should reconsider it en banc.

I

A

The civil jury right was not always a given. The original 

Constitution, as ratified in 1788, guaranteed a jury only in 

criminal cases. See U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 3. Debates 

about extending the same right to civil matters colored much 

of the ratification period, with the Anti-Federalists insisting 

that juries promote “an open and public discussion of all 

causes” free from “secret and arbitrary proceedings.” SEC 

v. Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. 2117, 2144 (2024) (Gorsuch, J., 

concurring) (quoting Letter from a Federal Farmer (Jan. 18, 

1788), in 2 The Complete Anti-Federalist 320 (H. Storing 

ed. 1981)); see also Parsons v. Bedford, 28 U.S. (3 Pet.) 433, 

446 (1830) (“One of the strongest objections originally taken 

against the constitution of the United States, was the want of 

an express provision securing the right of trial by jury in civil 

cases.”). Some Federalists were more skeptical. Despite the 

jury’s importance in the criminal context, the Federalists 

doubted “the essentiality of” a civil jury right, at least as a 

matter of federal constitutional law. The Federalist No. 83 

(Alexander Hamilton); see In re U.S. Fin. Sec. Litig., 609 

F.2d 411, 420 (9th Cir. 1979). That view did not carry the 

day for long. By 1791, the Anti-Federalists had prevailed, 

and the right to civil trial by jury was enshrined in the 

Seventh Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights.

Although the Seventh Amendment “preserve[s]” the 

“right of trial by jury” in “[s]uits at common law,” it has been 

interpreted to extend beyond the “common-law forms of 

action recognized” in 1791. Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 

192–93 (1974) (quoting U.S. Const. amend. VII). The 

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 21

Amendment equally applies to statutory actions that are 

“legal in nature,” rather than claims that traditionally arose 

in equity. Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. at 2128 (quoting 

Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg, 492 U.S. 33, 53 (1989)). 

In determining whether a suit is “legal in nature,” courts 

“consider the cause of action and the remedy it provides.” 

Id. at 2129; see Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 417–18 

(1987). The second factor—the remedy—is “more 

important.” Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. at 2129 (quoting Tull, 481 

U.S. at 421). Put simply, the Constitution “preserves the 

right to trial by jury of all legal claims,” including those that 

are statutory. Dollar Sys., Inc. v. Avcar Leasing Sys., Inc., 

890 F.2d 165, 170 (9th Cir. 1989). But “no right to a jury 

exists” for equitable claims. Id.

B

The Supreme Court, for much of its history, described 

restitution as arising in equity. In Mertens v. Hewitt 

Associates, the Court noted that restitution is “a remedy 

traditionally viewed as ‘equitable.’” 508 U.S. 248, 255 

(1993). And in Teamsters v. Terry, the Court characterized 

“damages as equitable when they are restitutionary.” 494 

U.S. 558, 570 (1990); see also, e.g., Tull, 481 U.S. at 424 

(restitution “traditionally considered an equitable remedy”). 

Thus, the Supreme Court, until 20 years ago, generally 

characterized restitution as equitable relief.

Then came Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Co. v. 

Knudson, 534 U.S. 204 (2002). Great-West addressed 

whether a provision of the Employee Retirement Income 

Security Act (ERISA) authorizing “appropriate equitable 

relief” includes claims for restitution. 534 U.S. at 209, 212 

(quoting 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(3)(B)). The Court explained 

that while restitution often sounds in equity, that is not 

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22 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

always the case. Id. at 212. “In the days of the divided 

bench, restitution was available in certain cases at law, and 

in certain others in equity.” Id. (citing 1 D. Dobbs, Law of 

Remedies § 1.2, at 11 (2d ed. 1993)). Legal restitution 

involved cases in which a plaintiff lacked title over a piece 

of property but could “show just grounds for recovering 

money to pay for some benefit the defendant had received 

from him.” Id. at 213 (quoting 1 Dobbs § 4.2(1), at 571). 

On the other hand, a plaintiff could seek equitable restitution 

where money or objects that the plaintiff owned “could 

clearly be traced to particular funds or property in the 

defendant’s possession.” Id.

The Court clarified that the test for whether restitution 

“is legal or equitable” ultimately “depends on the basis for 

the plaintiff’s claim and the nature of the underlying 

remedies sought.” Id. (quoting Reich v. Cont’l Cas. Co., 33 

F.3d 754, 756 (7th Cir. 1994)) (cleaned up). That’s the same 

test for invoking the Seventh Amendment right. See, e.g.,

Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. at 2129 (“To determine whether a suit is 

legal in nature, we directed courts to consider the cause of 

action and the remedy it provides.”). These similarities were 

not lost on the Court. Parsing the “law-equity dichotomy,” 

it explained, “is an inquiry . . . that we are accustomed to 

pursuing, and will always have to pursue, in other contexts,” 

including the Seventh Amendment’s right to a civil jury. 

Great-W., 534 U.S. at 217 (citing Curtis, 415 U.S. at 192). 

As others have recognized, “neither the correctness nor the 

persuasiveness of Great-West Life’s description of 

restitution at law and in equity turns on the particular context 

in which Justice Scalia performed it.” United States v. ERR, 

LLC, 35 F.4th 405, 414 (5th Cir. 2022); see also Liu v. SEC, 

591 U.S. 71, 81 (2020) (invoking the Supreme Court’s 

“‘transsubstantive guidance on broad and fundamental’ 

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 23

equitable principles” (quoting Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. 

Fossil, Inc., 590 U.S. 212, 217 (2020))). So while GreatWest happened to involve ERISA, its discussion of legal and 

equitable restitution illustrates the scope of the Seventh 

Amendment right. After all, claims for legal restitution are, 

in their nature, suits “at common law.” So they guarantee a 

jury trial. Claims for equitable restitution trigger no such 

guarantee.

II

We decided Commerce Planet against this backdrop. 

You wouldn’t know it though, considering how little weight 

our decision gave to Great-West. Rather than grapple with 

the difference between legal and equitable restitution, as the 

Supreme Court did, Commerce Planet asserted that the 

Court has labeled all restitution as equitable relief that 

necessarily falls outside the Seventh Amendment’s scope. 

815 F.3d at 602. Thus, the restitution remedy—in any 

form—“confers no right to a jury trial.” Id. That could not 

be further from the truth.

A

First, Commerce Planet anchored its holding not in the 

Great-West majority opinion, but in Justice Ginsburg’s 

dissent. According to the panel, the Supreme Court “has 

consistently stated that restitution is an equitable remedy for 

Seventh Amendment purposes, without drawing any 

distinction between the legal and equitable forms of that 

relief.” Id. (citing Great-W., 534 U.S. at 229 (Ginsburg, J., 

dissenting)) (emphasis added). Only part of that statement 

is correct. Granted, Justice Ginsburg recognized, like the

Great-West majority, that the Supreme Court historically 

“described restitutionary relief as ‘equitable’ without even 

mentioning, much less dwelling upon, the ancient 

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classifications” between the remedy’s legal and equitable 

forms. Great-W., 534 U.S. at 229 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); 

see id. at 214–15 (maj. op.) (“Admittedly, our cases have not 

previously drawn this fine distinction between restitution at 

law and restitution in equity . . . .”). But Justice Ginsburg 

then acknowledged that the majority’s test for distinguishing 

between legal and equitable restitution is also used “in the 

context of the Seventh Amendment.” Id. at 232 

(Ginsburg, J., dissenting). She even cited the majority’s 

invocation of the Seventh Amendment as an example of the 

legal-equitable dichotomy at work. Id. (citing 534 U.S. at 

217). With Great-West holding that there’s a difference 

between legal and equitable restitution, and Justice Ginsburg 

conceding that the majority’s test for teasing out that 

difference coincides with the Seventh Amendment analysis, 

not even the Great-West dissent supports Commerce Planet.

Commerce Planet also relied on the Supreme Court’s 

decision in Teamsters. There, the Court noted that “we have 

characterized damages as equitable where they are 

restitutionary.” 494 U.S. at 570. That sentence, according 

to Commerce Planet, “strongly suggests” that restitution “is 

considered equitable under the Seventh Amendment even if 

imposed as a merely personal liability upon the defendant.” 

815 F.3d at 602. Whatever the meaning of the line from 

Teamsters, it’s hardly a definitive statement about how to 

understand a constitutional right. And in any event, it was 

expressly disclaimed in—wait for it—Great-West. As the 

majority explained, “[W]hile we noted” in Teamsters that 

“‘we have characterized damages as equitable where they 

are restitutionary,’ we did not (and could not) say that all 

forms of restitution are equitable.” Great-W., 534 U.S. at 

218 n.4 (quoting Teamsters, 494 U.S. at 570). Commerce 

Planet simply ignores that language.

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 25

To sum up: Commerce Planet bucks the Supreme 

Court’s decision in Great-West. And its reliance on 

Teamsters is also misplaced. We practically conceded as 

much; the panel wrote that the Supreme Court’s prior 

precedent on restitution and the Seventh Amendment “may 

need to be reconsidered in light of Great-West’s holding.” 

Com. Planet, 815 F.3d at 602. Although the panel viewed 

“that as a matter the Supreme Court must resolve,” id., it’s 

hard to see how the Great-West majority could have been 

clearer: “[N]ot all relief falling under the rubric of restitution 

is available in equity,” 534 U.S. at 212; see id. at 217 

(analogizing to the Seventh Amendment analysis). Yes, 

earlier cases suggested that restitution is an exclusively 

equitable remedy. See, e.g., id. at 214–16. But our job is to 

ensure that our law tracks current Supreme Court 

precedent.1 See, e.g., Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 899–

900 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc). And when the Court makes a 

clear statement distinguishing its prior cases—as it did in 

1 That is not to say we can treat Supreme Court precedent as “implicitly 

overruled.” Mallory v. Norfolk S. Ry. Co., 600 U.S. 122, 136 (2023) 

(quotation omitted). “As a circuit court, even if recent Supreme Court 

jurisprudence has perhaps called into question the continuing viability of 

its precedent, we are bound to follow a controlling Supreme Court 

precedent until it is explicitly overruled by that Court.” Nunez-Reyes v. 

Holder, 646 F.3d 684, 692 (9th Cir. 2011) (en banc) (cleaned up). That 

rule does not apply here. Great-West was clear that existing precedent 

only told part of the story when it comes to legal versus equitable 

restitution. 534 U.S. at 214–15 (“[O]ur cases have not previously drawn 

this fine distinction between restitution at law and restitution in equity, 

but neither have they involved an issue to which the distinction was 

relevant.” (emphasis added)). So Great-West did not overrule or cabin 

those cases, implicitly or otherwise. See id. at 215 (“Mertens did not 

purport to change the well-settled principle that restitution is ‘not an 

exclusively equitable remedy’ . . . .”) (quoting Reich, 33 F.3d at 756)). It 

merely developed another nuance that the Court had not considered.

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Great-West—we cannot bury our head in the sand until the 

Justices have been even clearer.

B

Recent cases highlight Commerce Planet’s flaws. In Liu, 

the Supreme Court performed the “familiar” task of 

distinguishing equitable remedies, concluding that 

traditional equity courts could not award relief that exceeded 

“a defendant’s net profits from wrongdoing.” 591 U.S. at 

78, 85. And as we hold today, Liu’s reasoning applies “to 

all categories of equitable relief, including restitution.” Op. 

at 11 (quoting CFPB v. Consumer First Legal Grp., LLC, 6 

F.4th 694, 710 (7th Cir. 2021)). It follows from Liu that 

when claims for restitution exceed net profits, that restitution 

is “more properly characterized as legal.” Op. at 12. Yet 

Commerce Planet treats legal and equitable restitution the 

same under the Seventh Amendment, declining to address 

the distinction that the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Liu. 815 

F.3d at 602.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Jarkesy is even 

more instructive. The issue in Jarkesy was whether the 

Seventh Amendment is implicated when the Securities and 

Exchange Commission seeks civil penalties against a 

defendant in an in-house adjudication. 144 S. Ct. at 2127. 

Answering yes, the Court found that the remedy in that case 

(civil penalties) was “all but dispositive.” Id. at 2129. By 

seeking a “prototypical common law remedy,” the Court 

reasoned, the SEC triggered the civil jury right. Id. at 2129–

30; see Tull, 481 U.S. at 422 (“A civil penalty was a type of 

remedy at common law that could only be enforced in courts 

of law.”). Legal restitution, like a civil penalty, is a 

“prototypical common law remedy.” As the Court explained 

in Great-West, the right to legal restitution “derived from the 

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CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC. 27

common-law writ of assumpsit.” 534 U.S. at 213 (citing 1 

Dobbs § 4.2(1), at 571). Putting all this together, if Jarkesy 

counsels that a request for common law remedies 

“effectively decides” the Seventh Amendment question, and 

if Great-West says that legal (not equitable) restitution is a 

common law remedy, then Commerce Planet’s Seventh 

Amendment holding cannot stand. See Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. 

at 2130.

C

Finally, Commerce Planet puts us at odds with the Fifth 

Circuit, which interprets Great-West to require a jury trial on 

statutory claims for legal restitution. In ERR, the Fifth 

Circuit addressed whether the Seventh Amendment 

guarantees a jury trial on the government’s claims for 

removal costs under the Oil Pollution Act. 35 F.4th at 407. 

Pointing to Great-West’s distinction between legal and 

equitable restitution, the court held that oil removal costs 

“are most analogous to restitution at law.” Id. at 412–13 

(emphasis removed). The court expressly rejected the 

argument—so central to Commerce Planet—that 

“restitution always sounds in equity.” Id. at 416 (citing 

Hatco Corp. v. W.R. Grace & Co. Conn., 59 F.3d 400, 412 

(3d Cir. 1995)). “Whatever the truth of that premise” before 

2002, the court explained, “it has been squarely foreclosed 

by subsequent Supreme Court precedent.” Id. (citing GreatW., 534 U.S. at 212, 215); see id. at 414 (“[W]e’re obligated 

to follow Great-West Life.”).

The Fifth Circuit concluded that Great-West thus 

compelled a jury trial on the government’s claims, given that 

the Supreme Court conducted “the exact same inquiry [its] 

precedent requires for the Seventh Amendment.” Id. at 414; 

see also Pereira v. Farace, 413 F.3d 330, 340 (2d Cir. 2005) 

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28 CFPB V. CASHCALL, INC.

(“Like our sister circuits, we are compelled to read GreatWest as broadly as it is written.”). The Fifth Circuit got it 

right.

III

The Seventh Amendment right is “of such importance 

and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence 

that any seeming curtailment of the right” must “be 

scrutinized with the utmost care.” Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. at 

2128 (quoting Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U.S. 474, 486 (1935)). 

Commerce Planet did not scrutinize the Seventh 

Amendment carefully. And the Supreme Court has whittled 

away at Commerce Planet. See AMG Cap. Mgmt., 593 U.S. 

at 71, 75 (abrogating Commerce Planet’s holding regarding 

restitution awards as “ancillary relief”); see also FTC v. 

AMG Cap. Mgmt., LLC, 910 F.3d 417, 437 (9th Cir. 2018) 

(O’Scannlain, J., specially concurring) (“Our decision in 

Commerce Planet is therefore a relic of that ancien regime

that the Court over the last few decades has expressly and 

repeatedly repudiated.”), rev’d, 593 U.S. 67 (2021). It’s 

time to put the final nail in the coffin.

This is not the case for that final nail since CashCall 

waived a jury trial. See Op. at 9–10. But in the right case, 

the en banc court should get rid of Commerce Planet root 

and branch. In the meantime, future three-judge panels 

should not extend its defective reasoning.

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