[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-12901

Non-Argument Calendar

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In re: 160 ROYAL PALM, LLC,

Debtor. 

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160 ROYAL PALM, LLC, 

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

GLENN STRAUB, 

PALM BEACH POLO, INC., 

Defendants-Appellees.

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2 Opinion of the Court 22-12901

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 9:21-cv-81217-AMC

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Before ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

160 Royal Palm seeks to recoup $6.2 million the company 

transferred to Glenn Straub, claiming that it was a voidable

fraudulent transfer. The bankruptcy court concluded that

collateral estoppel barred this argument for part of the funds, and 

that, in any event, this claim failed because none of the funds were 

Royal Palm’s property. Because we spot no legal mistakes or clear 

factual errors, we affirm.

I. 

In Palm Beach, Florida, stands an unfinished hotel known 

locally as the Palm House Hotel. This hotel has a “tortured 

history.” In re 160 Royal Palm, LLC, No. 18-19441, 2019 WL 

989829, at *1 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. Feb. 26, 2019), subsequently aff’d sub 

nom. In re KK-PB Fin., LLC, Nos. 20-12361, 20-12368, 2021 WL 

5605085 (11th Cir. Nov. 30, 2021). At one point in that history, the 

hotel was owned by 160 Royal Palm, which was in turn owned by

Glenn Straub. Eventually, Straub sold Royal Palm (and thus the 

hotel) to a man named Robert Matthews for $36 million. Under 

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the August 30, 2013 sale agreement, Matthews would pay Straub 

about $6.2 million in cash and Royal Palm would issue a note—a 

promise to pay the rest over time—to an entity controlled by 

Straub, secured by a mortgage on the hotel. On September 11, 

2013, Royal Palm wired Straub $6,211,000.00 and on October 2, 

2013, it sent $8,718.32 to Palm Beach Polo, which was controlled 

by Straub. 

About five years later, Royal Palm declared bankruptcy. See 

id. During this original bankruptcy proceeding, Straub’s entity 

with the note and mortgage asked the court to recognize its claim

to Royal Palm’s assets, which it asserted was worth close to $40 

million. The court refused. It held that Royal Palm had shown all 

the elements of fraudulent transfer under Florida Statutes 

§ 726.106(1), so Straub’s claim was worth $0. 

In analyzing the transfer, the bankruptcy court had to 

examine Royal Palm’s solvency around the time of Straub’s sale. 

Under § 726.106(1), a transfer is fraudulent only if “the debtor was 

insolvent at that time or the debtor became insolvent as a result of 

the transfer or obligation.” So the court performed a “balance 

sheet test” in which it estimated Royal Palm’s total assets and 

liabilities and compared the two. To do this test, the court had to 

categorize assets and liabilities, including a $2.6 million transfer

that passed through Royal Palm’s bank account around the time of 

the sale. The court found that these $2.6 million in funds were “not 

assets of the Debtor [Royal Palm] but were parked with the Debtor 

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for later payment to Mr. Straub as part of the equity sale 

transaction.” Id. at *11.

In 2019, this adversarial action began: Royal Palm sued 

Straub in bankruptcy court to recover the $6.2 million paid to 

Straub back in 2013. The bankruptcy court ultimately dismissed 

the claim because Royal Palm could not show that it owned the 

transferred cash. 

Three of its decisions are relevant to this appeal. First, the 

court said that Royal Palm was collaterally estopped from asserting 

that $2.6 million of the $6.2 million was its property given the 

court’s findings in the original bankruptcy case. Second, the court 

decided, on summary judgment, that there was an issue of fact 

about whether Royal Palm owned the remaining $3.6 million. 

Even though it presumed that money in Royal Palm’s account 

belonged to it, evidence about the method and amounts of the 

transfers countered this presumption. 

Third, the bankruptcy court concluded—after a bench 

trial—that the $6.2 million did not belong to Royal Palm. “Based 

on the overwhelming evidence,” it found that “all of the funds used 

to make the two wire transfers at issue in this case were merely 

parked in the debtor’s bank account to facilitate payment to Mr. 

Straub.” Indeed, Royal Palm “had no right to use them for a 

different purpose.” “Those funds were not the debtor’s property.” 

Royal Palm appealed to the district court, which affirmed, 

and then to this Court. It reiterates that the bankruptcy court made 

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two errors on summary judgment: applying collateral estoppel for 

$2.6 million and concluding that disputed facts prevented summary 

judgment for the remaining $3.6 million. Royal Palm also 

challenges the bankruptcy court’s finding—after a bench trial—

that Royal Palm did not own any of the $6.2 million it transferred 

to Straub. 

II. 

When a district court affirms a bankruptcy court order, we 

review the bankruptcy court’s decision. L. Sols. of Chi. LLC v. 

Corbett, 971 F.3d 1299, 1304 (11th Cir. 2020). In so doing, we 

review the bankruptcy court’s factual findings for clear error and 

its legal conclusions de novo. Id. 

III. 

A. 

Collateral estoppel bars a party from relitigating an issue 

already decided in a prior suit. I.A. Durbin, Inc. v. Jefferson Nat. 

Bank, 793 F.2d 1541, 1549 (11th Cir. 1986). As the bankruptcy court 

correctly recited, the doctrine applies when the issue in the older 

proceeding was (1) identical; (2) actually litigated; (3) a “critical and 

necessary part” of the prior judgment; and (4) the party potentially 

precluded had a full and fair opportunity to litigate that issue. 

Christo v. Padgett, 223 F.3d 1324, 1339 (11th Cir. 2000) (quotation 

omitted). Applying this test, the court concluded that its finding in 

the original bankruptcy proceeding—that the $2.6 million in cash

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was not one of Royal Palm’s assets—precluded Royal Palm from 

claiming the funds as property in this adversarial bankruptcy suit. 

Royal Palm maintains that the court erred in deciding that 

the issue was both “identical” and “critical and necessary.” Both 

are “factual determinations underlying” the court’s collateral 

estoppel analysis, so we will not disturb them unless clearly 

erroneous. Richardson v. Ala. State Bd. of Educ., 935 F.2d 1240, 

1244 (11th Cir. 1991); see Islam v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 

997 F.3d 1333, 1340–41 (11th Cir. 2021) (reviewing whether 

something was “actually litigated” for clear error). This is a 

deferential standard; we only reverse if we have “a definite and firm 

conviction that a mistake has been committed.” United States v. 

Rodriguez, 34 F.4th 961, 969 (11th Cir. 2022) (quotation omitted), 

cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 580 (2023).

We see no clear error. In assessing “identical,” the court 

reasoned that its earlier conclusion that the $2.6 million was not 

Royal Palm’s asset also meant it was not its property. That makes

sense: the cash had value, and if it could not count as some sort of 

asset, then Royal Palm had no ownership interest. The relevant 

Florida Statutes confirm this commonsense conclusion, defining 

“asset” as “property of a debtor.” Fla. Stat. § 726.102(2). 

Royal Palm primarily argues that the issues were not 

“identical” because the burden of persuasion differed between the 

proceedings. It is true that issues are not identical if distinct legal 

standards apply, or evidentiary burdens differ in legally significant 

fashion. See B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Indus., Inc., 575 U.S. 

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138, 154 (2015); One Lot Emerald Cut Stones & One Ring v. United 

States, 409 U.S. 232, 235 (1972). Royal Palm asserts that the court 

in this proceeding had to apply a legal presumption that Royal 

Palm owned the funds. True enough, “funds in a debtor’s account 

are generally presumed to be the debtor’s property.” In re Int’l 

Pharmacy & Disc. II, Inc., 443 F.3d 767, 771 (11th Cir. 2005). But 

Royal Palm never claims that this presumption did not also apply 

in the original bankruptcy estimation proceeding. Given the broad 

framing of our caselaw, we do not see why the presumption would 

be limited to formally adversarial proceedings. We cannot say the 

court erred in finding the issues “identical.”

Nor did it clearly err in concluding that the issue was “critical 

and necessary” to the earlier proceeding. The bankruptcy court 

reasoned—and the parties seem to agree—that an issue is critical 

and necessary if it “was actually recognized by the parties as 

important and by the trier as necessary to the first judgment.” See 

Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 27 cmt. j (1982). The court 

found that the parties and trier of fact (itself) did consider it 

important whether the $2.6 million was Royal Palm’s asset.

Under that framing of “critical and necessary,” we see no 

clear error. In the original proceeding, Royal Palm successfully 

reduced Straub’s note-based claim to $0 based on fraudulent 

transfer. Under the relevant statute, Royal Palm had to show that 

it was “insolvent at that time” or “became insolvent as a result” of 

the transfer. Fla. Stat. § 726.106. And a debtor is insolvent “if the 

sum of the debtor’s debts is greater than all of the debtor’s assets at 

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a fair valuation.” Id. § 726.103(1). As a result, the court had to 

estimate Royal Palm’s assets to produce its judgment—a judgment 

favorable to Royal Palm.

 Royal Palm argues that the issue was unnecessary because 

the $2.6 million would not have tipped the balance to solvency. 

True enough, removing the cash as an asset did not change the 

ultimate insolvency result. Still, computing assets and liabilities is 

indisputably necessary to the process described in Florida Statutes

§ 726.103. This statute requires courts to evaluate “all of the 

debtor’s assets” in assessing insolvency. In doing an insolvency 

analysis requiring numeric totals, it does not make sense to judge 

the importance of each number in isolation. After all, the trier of 

fact—the court—raised the $2.6 million because Royal Palm’s own 

expert had included it as an asset, suggesting that Royal Palm 

considered it important. See In re 160 Royal Palm, LLC, 2019 WL 

989829, at *10–11. Based on the record, we do not have a “definite 

and firm conviction” that the court erred in deciding that this issue

was critical and necessary. 

B. 

We now turn to the bankruptcy court’s conclusions about 

whether the funds were Royal Palm’s property. 

Although Royal Palm urges us to review the court’s denial 

of summary judgment—and the district court improperly did so—

we “will not review the pretrial denial of a motion for summary 

judgment after a full trial and judgment on the merits.” Lind v. 

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United Parcel Serv., Inc., 254 F.3d 1281, 1286 (11th Cir. 2001). Here 

the court entered a “Final Judgment” dismissing Royal Palm’s

complaint after a bench trial, so we will not reconsider its summary 

judgment denial. 

After the trial, the court decided based on “the 

overwhelming evidence” that none of the $6.2 million belonged to 

Royal Palm.1 Whether a “transfer involves the property of the 

Debtor is a finding of fact that is subject to review only for clear 

error.” In re Int’l Pharmacy & Disc. II, Inc., 443 F.3d at 771. 

We see no clear error. Despite the presumption that the 

funds belonged to Royal Palm, the court heard facts at trial that 

called into question whether it had “sufficient control over the 

funds to warrant a finding that the funds were the debtor 

corporation’s property.” In re Chase & Sanborn Corp., 813 F.2d 

1177, 1180 (11th Cir. 1987). Most importantly, as the court noted, 

the total amount of the funds transferred to Royal Palm and on to 

Straub “was exactly the sum owing to Mr. Straub when he sold his 

equity interest in the debtor.” 

Royal Palm’s forensic accounting expert, Marcie D. Bour,

testified at trial that she traced the $6.2 million in cash transfers. 

Four transfers arrived in Royal Palm’s bank account from lawyer 

1 The court explicitly stated that its factual finding “includes the 2.6 million 

dollars the Court addressed at summary judgment.” So even if the bankruptcy 

court had erred in invoking collateral estoppel, the result for Royal Palm 

almost certainly would have been the same. 

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trust accounts: $2,600,000, $2,580,000, $150,920.08, and 

$890,000.78. Together, that is $6,220,920.86. Soon after, Royal 

Palm wired $6,211,000 to Straub and $8,718.32 to Palm Beach Polo, 

totaling $6,219,718.32. Based on the transfers’ path, timing, and 

total compared to the cash purchase price, we cannot conclude that 

the court clearly erred.

Royal Palm repeatedly argues that neither Straub nor the 

bankruptcy court showed who owned the funds, so they must have 

belonged to it. This argument fails on two fronts. First, Straub did 

not necessarily need to prove who owned the funds to rebut the 

presumption that Royal Palm owned them. Put another way, the 

question was not who owned the funds, but whether Royal Palm 

in fact did. Regardless, Straub explicitly argues that he controlled 

and therefore owned the funds—not Royal Palm. Likewise, the 

court found that Royal Palm transferred the cash to “facilitate 

payment to Mr. Straub” and that Royal Palm “had no right to use 

them for a different purpose,” suggesting that he owned the funds. 

* * *

We AFFIRM. 

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