FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

IN RE: CERY BRADLEY PERLE,

Debtor,

CERY BRADLEY PERLE,

Appellant,

v.

ALFONSO FIERO,

Appellee.

No. 11-60000

BAP No.

10-1048

OPINION

Appeal from the Ninth Circuit

Bankruptcy Appellate Panel

Pappas, Kirscher, and Lynch, Bankruptcy Judges, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

December 7, 2012—Pasadena, California

Filed August 2, 2013

Before: Sandra S. Ikuta and Jacqueline H. Nguyen,

Circuit Judges, and Larry A. Burns,* District Judge.

Opinion by Judge Burns

* The Honorable Larry A. Burns, United States District Judge for the

Southern District of California, sitting by designation.
2 IN RE: PERLE

SUMMARY**

Bankruptcy

The panel affirmed the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel’s

ruling that an arbitration debt was nondischargeable in

bankruptcy under 11 U.S.C. §§ 523(a)(3) and 523(a)(6).

The panel held that the creditor’s challenge to the

dischargeability of the debt was not filed within 60 days of

the first date set for the creditors meeting but nonetheless was

timely because the chapter 7 debtor did not adequately

identify the debt on his Schedule E, and the creditor did not

have notice or actual knowledge of the bankruptcy. The

panel held that the creditor’s lawyer’s knowledge could not

be imputed to the creditor on an agency theory when the

lawyer learned of the bankruptcy during his representation of

another client and after the completion of his representation

of the creditor in relation to the debt.

COUNSEL

Janine R. Menhennet (argued), Solana Beach, California;

Joseph Darrell Palmer, Law Offices of Darrell Palmer, Solana

Beach, California, for Defendant-Appellant.

Leslie Schwaebe Akins, Leslie Schwaebe Akins, A Law

Corporation, Carlsbad, California, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

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

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
IN RE: PERLE 3

OPINION

BURNS, District Judge:

Under the bankruptcy rules, a creditor has a limited

window of time in which to challenge the dischargeability of

certain kinds of debts. That window stays open, though, if

the creditor doesn’t receive adequate notice of the bankruptcy

from the debtor. The question in this case is whether the

creditor’s lawyer’s knowledge of the bankruptcy constitutes

notice to the creditor. In the abstract, it well might. But here

there’s a wrinkle: The lawyer learned of the debtor’s

bankruptcy during his representation of another client, and

although the lawyer continued to represent the creditor on

other matters, he no longer represented the creditor in relation

to the debt at issue. On these facts, we hold that it stretches

the agency principle too far to impute the lawyer’s knowledge

of the debtor’s bankruptcy to the creditor.

I. Factual Background

Cery Bradley Perle filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7

of the BankruptcyCode in 2001. Among Perle’s outstanding

debts was a $350,000 arbitration award to Fiero Brothers, a

New York securities dealer. The award was made in 1998 by

a National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD)

arbitration panel, which found that Perle had committed

securities fraud. Fiero Brothers was represented in the

arbitration by a New York-based lawyer named Martin

Russo, but Russo did not continue to represent Fiero Brothers

in the matter after the arbitration. Instead, Fiero Brothers

retained California counsel to confirm the award in the

California Superior Court and to obtain an enforceable

judgment against Perle. Russo did, however, continue to
4 IN RE: PERLE

represent Fiero Brothers in other unrelated matters after the

arbitration.

In his bankruptcy filing, Perle didn’t list Fiero Brothers or

the $350,000 arbitration award as such on his Schedule E, a

form on which a Chapter 7 debtor is required to list creditors

with unsecured priority claims. Instead, he listed

“NASD/NASD Regulation” as the creditor on the arbitration

debt, and said that the amount of the debt was “unknown.” 

He also reported that the debt was incurred in 1999 (rather

than 1998), and that the consideration for it was

“Arbitration.” At the top of the Schedule E, there was a space

to identify the type of priority claims listed below. Perle

wrote “Taxes, Governmental Debts.” Finally, although Perle

listed specific creditors to whom he owed other NASD

arbitration awards on his Schedule F, a form for nonpriority

claims, he did not name Fiero Brothers on that form either.

Two months after Perle filed for bankruptcy, Corsair

Capital Partners, a private equity firm, filed a

nondischargeability complaint against Perle relating to a

default judgment that it had obtained against him. Corsair

was represented in the bankruptcy matter by Russo, the same

lawyer who had previously represented Fiero Brothers in the

arbitration. Although Russo was obviously aware of Perle’s

bankruptcy, and was still representing Fiero Brothers in other

matters, he never informed Fiero Brothers of the pending

Perle bankruptcy.

In March 2002, Perle received a general discharge of his

debts and his bankruptcy was closed. Over four years later,
IN RE: PERLE 5

in September 2006, Fiero Brothers1 filed a motion to reopen

Perle’s bankruptcy in order to challenge the dischargeability

of the arbitration award. The bankruptcy court granted the

motion, and subsequently declared the arbitration debt

nondischargeable. That determination was upheld by the

Bankruptcy Appellate Panel. Perle appeals.

II. Timeliness of Fiero Brothers’ Challenge

Perle’s first argument is that Fiero Brothers’ challenge to

the dischargeability of the arbitration debt was untimely. 

Under Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 4007(c), a

creditor generally has 60 days from the first date set for the

creditors meeting to file a nondischargeability complaint for

certain kinds of debts. Fiero Brothers’ nondischargeability

complaint was obviously late, and by years. But there is an

exception to the 60-day rule. Under 11 U.S.C. §§ 523(a)(3)

and (a)(6), debts that result from a debtor’s willful and

malicious acts that injure others remain nondischargeable if

they are not listed in the debtor’s schedules “in time to permit

. . . timely filing of a proof of claim and timely request for a

determination of dischargeability of such debt . . . , unless

such creditor had notice or actual knowledge of the case in

time for such timely filing and request.” The bankruptcy

court relied on this exception to find that Perle’s debt to Fiero

Brothers was nondischargeable.

Perle doesn’t quibble that his debt to Fiero Brothers is of

the type that is nondischargeable under 11 U.S.C.

1 Fiero Brothers had assigned the arbitration award to Alfonso Fiero,

who individually filed the challenge to the dischargeability of the debt in

the bankruptcy court. For simplicity, we refer to Fiero Brothers as the

creditor throughout this opinion.
6 IN RE: PERLE

§§ 523(a)(3) and (a)(6). To get around the exception, he must

therefore establish either that he adequately identified the

debt on his Schedule E, or if not, that Fiero Brothers

nonetheless had notice or actual knowledge of his

bankruptcy. He maintains he has established both.

A. Perle’s Schedule E

The information about the arbitration award debt that

Perle listed on his Schedule E was patently inaccurate. 

Although Perle tries to downplay it, the description he

provided was so nebulous that it was impossible to tell that it

was Fiero Brothers to whom he was actually indebted. For

example, although the arbitration panel ruled unambiguously

that Perle was liable to Fiero Brothers in the amount of

$350,000.00, Perle didn’t name Fiero Brothers on the

Schedule E nor did he list the amount. Instead, he incorrectly

reported the debt was owed to “NASD/NASD Regulation,”

and he stated the amount was “unknown.” He also misstated

the date the debt had been incurred, listing it as 1999 even

though the arbitration panel made the award in 1998. On top

of all of that, the award was neither a “tax” nor a

“governmental debt,” as Perle represented on the top of the

Schedule E.

Perle argues that because the arbitration panel’s ruling

was titled “NASD Regulation, Inc.,” he reasonably believed

that the debt was owed to the NASD and not to Fiero

Brothers. We doubt it. The arbitration panel’s ruling was

actually titled “Award,” and “NASD Regulation, Inc., Office

of Dispute Resolution” was a mere subheading on the panel’s

written judgment. Regardless, Perle had testified in the 1998

arbitration and knew that it was Fiero Brothers, not the

NASD, who had obtained the award against him. Moreover,
IN RE: PERLE 7

Perle listed other creditors to whom he owed NASD

arbitration awards by their names on his Schedule F, which

suggests that he knew exactly how to list Fiero Brothers on

his bankruptcy schedules but chose not to.

Ellett v. Stanislaus, 506 F.3d 774 (9th Cir. 2007), is

instructive. In that case, a Chapter 13 debtor notified the

California Franchise Tax Board of his bankruptcy but

misstated the final digit of his social security number so that

the board couldn’t conveniently locate his records and file a

timely proof of claim. Id. at 776–77. Although the board

could have identified the debtor with only a little diligence,

we held that it had no responsibility to; the burden was on the

debtor, in the first instance, to list the information correctly.

Id. at 781. Perle’s serial mischaracterization of known details

of the 1998 arbitration award was far more egregious than the

apparently inadvertent transposition of a single digit of a

social security number in Ellett. We conclude that Perle’s

Schedule E did not provide Fiero Brothers with proper notice

of his bankruptcy.

B. Fiero Brothers’ Imputed or Actual Knowledge

Fiero Brothers’ challenge to the dischargeability of the

debt may still have been untimely if it nonetheless “had

notice or actual knowledge of the [bankruptcy]” in time to file

a timely nondischargeability complaint. 11 U.S.C.

§ 523(a)(3). This leads to Perle’s alternative argument, which

is that Russo’s knowledge and awareness of the bankruptcy

should be imputed to Fiero Brothers on an agency theory. 

Ordinarily, a lawyer is a client’s agent and, consistent with

agency law, clients “are considered to have notice of all facts

known to their lawyer-agent.” Ringgold Corp. v. Worrall,
8 IN RE: PERLE

880 F.2d 1138, 1141–42 (9th Cir. 1989). But the agency

principle doesn’t neatly fit this case.

Russo had stopped representing Fiero Brothers in relation

to the dispute with Perle more than three years before Perle

filed for bankruptcy. In fact, well before Perle initiated his

bankruptcy, Fiero Brothers retained California counsel who

were unaffiliated with Russo to pursue the debt. 

“[O]rdinarily, an attorney-client relationship is terminated

once representation is completed.” Damron v. Herzog,

67 F.3d 211, 213 (9th Cir. 1995). And, generally speaking,

a lawyer’s authority to represent a client ends “because the

lawyer has completed the contemplated services.” 

Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers § 31

(2000). Here, the “contemplated services” that Russo

performed for Fiero Brothers consisted of handling the

arbitration. Once the arbitration ended, Russo no longer

represented Fiero Brothers with respect to it. He did continue

to handle other unrelated matters for Fiero Brothers, but this

is of little significance considering that a lawyer’s

representation of a client is subject-matter specific.

Additionally, Russo learned of Perle’s bankruptcy on

behalf of a different client, Corsair, who was contesting the

dischargeability of its own debt. This distinguishes Perle’s

case from two cases on which he relies, Lompa v. Price (In

re: Price), 871 F.2d 97 (9th Cir. 1989) and In re Linzer,

264 B.R. 243 (E.D.N.Y. 2001). In both of those cases, the

lawyer who received notice of the debtor’s bankruptcy was

still representing the creditor in relation to the debt that was

owed. Here, in contrast, Russo received notice of Perle’s

bankruptcy as Corsair’s counsel, not as Fiero Brothers’.
IN RE: PERLE 9

Perle has identified no case, nor are we able to find one,

that imputes to a client knowledge that his lawyer gained

while representing a different client. In fact, the authority is

to the contrary. In Maldonado v. Ramirez, 757 F.2d 48 (3rd

Cir. 1985), the Third Circuit held that “an attorney given

notice of the bankruptcy on behalf of a particular client is not

called upon to review all of his or her files to ascertain

whether any other client may also have a claim against the

bankrupt.” Id. at 51. We agree with this statement, and think

that a contrary rule would impose an undue burden on

counsel. Because Russo no longer represented Fiero Brothers

on the debt matter when Perle filed for bankruptcy, and

learned of the bankruptcy filing only in the course of

representing a different client, we are unwilling to impute the

notice or actual knowledge of Perle’s bankruptcy filing that

he had to Fiero Brothers.

We affirm the BAP’s ruling that the arbitration debt was

nondischargeable under §§ 523(a)(3) and 523(a)(6) of the

Bankruptcy Code. Because we find that the debt was

nondischargeable under these sections, we don’t reach the

question whether it was also nondischargeable under

§ 523(a)(19).

AFFIRMED.