Opinion ID: 3065362
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Willful Injury

Text: [4] In this Circuit, “§ 523(a)(6)’s willful injury requirement is met only when the debtor has a subjective motive to inflict IN THE MATTER OF ORMSBY 629 injury or when the debtor believes that injury is substantially certain to result from his own conduct.” Carillo v. Su (In re Su), 290 F.3d 1140, 1142 (9th Cir. 2002). The Debtor is charged with the knowledge of the natural consequences of his actions. Cablevision Sys. Corp. v. Cohen (In re Cohen), 121 B.R. 267, 271 (Bankr. E.D.N.Y. 1990); see Su, 290 F.3d at 1146 (“In addition to what a debtor may admit to knowing, the bankruptcy court may consider circumstantial evidence that tends to establish what the debtor must have actually known when taking the injury-producing action.”). [5] Ormsby contends section 523(a)(6) does not apply because the state court did not adopt a finding that Ormsby had the subjective intent to injure FATCO or that he believed that FATCO’s injury was substantially certain to occur as a result of his conduct. Ormsby must have known that FATCO’s injury was substantially certain to occur as a result of his conduct. Because Ormsby paid for access to the title plants for 2000 until present, he was necessarily aware that his use of FATCO’s title plants and other materials without paying for them had an economic value. The state court explicitly found that FATCO’s suffered injury by granting $141,500 in compensatory damages based on the measure of a reasonable royalty for a misappropriator’s unauthorized disclosure or use of a trade secret. Ormsby therefore inflicted willful injury on FATCO.