Opinion ID: 2917527
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Other Challenges to the Plan of Distribution

Text: Goodman raises two additional challenges to the judge’s approval of the receiver’s distribution plan. First, he argues that the judge erred in approving a plan that “crammed down” his claim by excluding postjudgment interest and court costs. Second, he argues that the decision to keep the claimants’ identities out of the public record was improper. These claims are equally flimsy. Goodman asserts that because his state-court default judgment against Central Sleep awarded court costs and No. 13-3837 17 Illinois law allows postjudgment interest, 735 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/2-1303, those amounts must be recognized as part of his claim in the receivership proceedings. Again he relies on the Full Faith and Credit Act, but he makes a number of obvious errors in his analysis. For starters, the district judge never questioned either the validity of the state-court judgment or its amount. And Goodman continues to overlook the fact that his ability to execute on his state-court judgment was strictly limited by the terms of the district judge’s September 2011 order granting relief from the stay and his consent to the equitable jurisdiction of the receivership court. To repeat: the judge’s order granted Goodman limited relief from the stay subject to objections by the receiver. The receiver’s proposed plan of distribution disallowed, as a matter of equity, Goodman’s claim of entitlement to court costs and postjudgment interest, something other claimants could not receive. The judge was entitled to agree. Goodman hasn’t explained how the judge otherwise abused her discretion. His inability to do so is no surprise; the judge’s approval of the plan was clearly correct. The exclusion of this small portion of Goodman’s claim was entirely appropriate because many claimants were prevented by the district court’s stay order from filing state-court actions. Other claimants had filed the receivership action in the first place and also could not separately pursue their claims in state court. To treat the claimants equally across the board, the final distribution plan reasonably excluded claim amounts attributable to penalties, interest, and attorney’s fees. Goodman’s argument with respect to the confidentiality of claimants’ identities fares no better. A district court’s 18 No. 13-3837 decision to keep a litigant’s name confidential is reviewed for abuse of discretion. Doe v. Elmbrook Sch. Dist., 658 F.3d 710, 721–24 (7th Cir. 2011), reversed on other grounds en banc, 687 F.3d 840, 842–43 (7th Cir. 2012) (adopting the panel’s analysis on anonymity). We are at least as deferential to a decision to keep other aspects of the record under seal. Goodman mounts only a feeble challenge to the judge’s decision, citing a single case, Mueller v. Raemisch, 740 F.3d 1128 (7th Cir. 2014), and relying on generalized references to bankruptcy-court practice. Neither Mueller nor general bankruptcy practice helps him here. While secrecy in judicial proceedings is generally disfavored (as we made clear in Mueller, see 740 F.3d at 1135–36), Goodman makes no effort to explain why the limited confidentiality allowed here is not appropriate in the context of this receivership. Indeed, the litigants’ names are public. Goodman insists that the names of all the other claimants— the victims of Dachman’s fraud—be made public. To the extent that this argument relies on Mueller, that case is not even remotely analogous. In Mueller we criticized a decision to allow sex-offender plaintiffs to litigate anonymously in a constitutional challenge to a state sex-offender registration law. Our criticism was largely premised on the fact that their status as sex offenders was already a matter of public record; we also noted they were perpetrators, not victims. See id. It should be self-evident that this reasoning does not apply here. Goodman also seeks support from general bankruptcy practice, but the Bankruptcy Code specifically provides that “a paper filed in a case under this title … [is a] public record” subject to limited exceptions. 11 U.S.C. § 107(a). A No. 13-3837 19 federal receivership is not governed by the Bankruptcy Code. Goodman has not explained why a receivership court’s broad discretion does not include the discretion to treat as confidential the names of the claimants. Nor has he given us any reason to think that the judge abused her discretion here.