Opinion ID: 2808503
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appropriateness of the Sanction.

Text: The debtor submits that the bankruptcy court abused its discretion by imposing a $100 sanction without adequate regard for the debtor's specific circumstances. These include the debtor's eventual compliance with the tax return production requirement, his good faith, his impecuniousness, and his manifest difficulties in managing his affairs. When a court confronts a violation of its own order, it may choose from a broad universe of possible sanctions. Velázquez Linares v. United States, 546 F.3d 710, 711 (1st Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). In exercising this considerable discretion, however, the court must give individualized consideration to the particular circumstances, id., and balance a myriad of factors, Young v. Gordon, 330 F.3d 76, 81 (1st Cir. 2003). In turn, our review of an imposed sanction for abuse of discretion requires that we evaluate whether a material factor deserving significant weight was ignored, whether an improper factor was relied upon, or whether when all proper and no improper factors were assessed[,] the - 18 - court made a serious mistake in weighing them. United States v. One 1987 BMW 325, 985 F.2d 655, 657-58 (1st Cir. 1993) (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). The record shows beyond any hope of contradiction that the bankruptcy court paid attention to the debtor's individual circumstances in selecting a sanction. The court acknowledged that the debtor, by the time of the hearing, had complied (albeit belatedly) with the tax return production requirement and that his initial noncompliance was inadvertent and not driven by a desire to withhold information from the Trustee. The court further acknowledged that the debtor was unlikely to receive a tax refund for the calendar year 2012, so the delay did not have the effect of withholding funds from creditors. Similarly, the court factored into the equation the debtor's dire straits. Although the court ultimately concluded that a sanction was warranted to send a message to the debtor and others regarding the importance of timely compliance with the tax return production requirement, 5 it 5 The bankruptcy court explained that certain basic requirements must be met in order to receive the benefit of the Chapter 13 process. It ranked the tax return production requirement among those obligations. And the court said that this debtor — like others similarly situated — must face some consequence for noncompliance. - 19 - exhibited some flexibility and invited the debtor to suggest an alternative sanction. In the end, the court halved the $200 sanction requested by the Trustee because the debtor had a cashflow problem. For this same reason, the court made the sanction payable on January 15, 2014 — more than three months after the date of the order. In light of the court's careful assessment of the full range of circumstances, we cannot say that the challenged sanction fell outside the wide encincture of its discretion.