Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-9012
Timestamp: 2014-10-25 03:07:19
Document Index: 202095184

Matched Legal Cases: ['§3663', '§3664', '§3663', '§3663', '§3663', '§3663', '§3664']

ROBERS v. UNITED STATES | LII / Legal Information Institute
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Held: The phrase “any part of the property . . . returned” refers to the property the banks lost, namely, the money they lent to Robers, and not to the collateral the banks received, namely, the houses. Read naturally, the words “the property,” which appear seven times in §3663A(b)(1), refer to the property that was lost as a result of the crime, here, the money. Because “[g]enerally, ‘identical words used in different parts of the same statute are . . . presumed to have the same meaning,’ ” Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. v. Dabit,
547 U. S. 71 (quoting IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez,
546 U. S. 21), “the property . . . returned” must also be the property lost as a result of the crime. Any awkwardness or redundancy that comes from substituting an amount of money for the words “the property” is the linguistic price paid for having a single statutory provision that covers different kinds of property. Since valuing money is easier than valuing other types of property, the natural reading also facilitates the statute’s administration.
Robers’ contrary arguments are unconvincing. First, other provisions of the statute, see, e.g., §§3664(f)(2), (3)(A), (4), seem to give courts adequate authority to avoid Robers’ false dichotomy of having to choose between refusing to award restitution and requiring the offender to pay the full amount lent where a victim has not sold the collateral by the time of sentencing. Second, for purposes of the statute’s proximate-cause requirement, see §§3663A(a)(2), 3664(e), normal market fluctuations do not break the causal chain between the offender’s fraud and the losses incurred by the victim. Third, even assuming that the return of collateral compensates lenders for their losses under state mortgage law, the issue here is whether the statutory provision, which does not purport to track state mortgage law, requires that collateral received be valued at the time the victim received it. Finally, the rule of lenity does not apply here. See Muscarello v. United States,
524 U. S. 125. Pp. 3–7.
The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 requires certain offenders to restore property lost by their victims as a result of the crime.
18 U. S. C. §3663A. A provision in the statue says that, when return of the property lost by the victim is “impossible, impracticable, or inadequate,” the offender must pay the victim “an amount equal to . . . the value of the property” less “the value (as of the date the property is returned) of any part of the property that is returned.” §3663A(b)(1)(B). The question before us is whether “any part of the property” is “returned” when a victim takes title to collateral securing a loan that an offender fraudulently obtained from the victim.
The words “the property” appear seven times in this sentence. If read naturally, they refer to the “property” that was “damage[d],” “los[t],” or “destr[oyed]” as a result of the crime. §3663A(b)(1). “Generally, ‘identical words used in different parts of the same statute are . . . presumed to have the same meaning.’ ” Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. v. Dabit,
(quoting IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez,
546 U. S. 21,
). And, if the “property” that was “damage[d],” “los[t],” or “destr[oyed]” was the money, then “the property . . . returned” must also be the money. Money being fungible, however, see, e.g., Ransom v. FIA Card Services, N. A., 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 17); Sabri v. United States,
541 U. S. 600,
606 (2004)
, “the property . . . returned” need not be the very same bills or checks.
Finally, Robers invokes the rule of lenity. To apply this rule, we would have to assume that we could interpret the statutory provision to help an offender like Robers, who is hurt when the market for collateral declines, without harming other offenders, who would be helped when the market for collateral rises. We cannot find such an interpretation. Regardless, the rule of lenity applies only if, after using the usual tools of statutory construction, we are left with a “grievous ambiguity or uncertainty in the statute.” Muscarello v. United States,
139 (1998)
(internal quotation marks omitted). Having come to the end of our analysis, we are left with no such ambiguity or uncertainty here. The statutory provision refers to the money lost, not to the collateral received.
Here, although the banks did not immediately sell the homes they received as collateral, Robers did not adequately argue below that their delay reflected a choice to hold the homes as investments.
* Such an argument would likely have been fruitless, because the delay appears consistent with a genuine desire to dispose of the collateral. Real property is not a liquid asset, which means that converting it to cash often takes time. See, e.g., 698 F. 3d 937, 947 (CA7 2012) (“[R]eal property is not liquid and, absent a huge price discount, cannot be sold immediately”). And indeed, the delays here appear to have resultedfrom illiquidity. See App. 70 (one of the two homes was placed on the market but did not immediately sell); id., at 89 (the other attracted no bids at a foreclosure sale). Because such delays are foreseeable, it is fair for Robers to bear their cost: the diminution in the homes’ value. See ante, at 6 (analysis of proximate causation).
In other cases, however, a defendant might be able to show that a significant delay in the sale of collateral evinced the victim’s choice to hold it as an investment rather than reducing it to cash. Suppose, for example, that a bank received shares of a public company as collateral for a fraudulently obtained loan. “Common stock traded on a national exchange is . . . readily convertible into cash,” Reves v. Ernst & Young,
494 U. S. 56,
, so if the bank waited more than a reasonable time to sell the shares, a district court could infer that the bank was not really trying to sell but instead was holding the shares as investment assets. If the shares declined in value after the bank chose to hold them, it would be wrong for the court to make the defendant bear that loss. As the Government acknowledged at oral argument, a victim’s choice to hold collateral—rather than selling it in a reasonably expeditious manner—breaks the chain of proximate causation. See, e.g., Tr. of Oral Arg. 38–39, 44–45. If the collateral loses value after the victim chooses to hold it, then that “part of the victim’s net los[s]” is “attributable to” the victim’s “independent decisions.” Id., at 39. The defendant cannot be regarded as the “proximate cause” of that part of the loss, ibid., and so cannot be made to bear it.
In such cases, I would place on the defendant the burden to show—with evidence specific to the market at issue—that a victim delayed unreasonably in selling collateral, manifesting a choice to hold the collateral. See
18 U. S. C. §3664(e) (burden to be allocated “as justice requires”). Because Robers did not sufficiently argue below that the banks broke the chain of proximate causation by choosing to hold the homes as investments, and because the delay encountered by the banks appears to have been reasonable, it is fair for Robers to bear the cost of that delay. I therefore join the Court in affirming the restitution order.
1* Before the District Court, Robers suggested precisely the opposite: that the banks had sold the homes too hastily, at fire-sale prices in a falling market. See App. 35 (“The drop in value could have been due to the housing market itself, or due to the victim’s rush to cut their losses with the properties and take whatever price they could get at a sheriff’s sale, regardless of whether the sale price reflected the fair market value of the property at the time”). Before the Seventh Circuit, Robers did suggest that the banks should have sold more quickly. See Brief for Appellant in No. 10–3794, p. 35 (“[T]here is no ‘loss causation’ here, . . . because the kind of loss that occurred (due to the market, or to the victims holding the property longer than they should have in a declining market, or to other unknown factors) was not the kind for which the defendant’s acts could have controlled or accounted”). But this argument does not imply that the banks’ delay reflected a choice to hold the homes as investments, only that the banks misjudged the timing of the sales.