Court Opinion

ID: 9817994
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 05:07:34.634435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:34:40.699181
License: Public Domain

CARNES, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I join in the Court’s judgment only because its decision to dispense with the contemporaneous objection rule in appeals from the bankruptcy court to the district court stems from, and is strictly limited by, the unique nature of the bankruptcy court’s duty to inquire into and review the cram down provisions of a Chapter 11 plan for purposes of enforcing the absolute priority rule contained in 8 U.S.C. § 1129(b)(2)(B). Any other defect in a Chapter 11 plan which is not brought to the attention of the bankruptcy court will not be preserved for review in the district court. See Majority Op. at 1222 n. 12 (“[0]ur narrow holding today only allows for the review of otherwise unpreserved challenges to a cram down plan on the ground that it violates the absolute priority rule found in § 1129(b)(2)(B).”). It is also worth noting that there was a specific objection in the district court. As a result, today’s decision does not, and could not, hold that an absolute priority rule violation could be reviewed by this Court if there had been no objection to the plan on that specific ground in the district court.
Finally, reason requires recognizing that we are vacating the district court’s decision not because that court failed to faithfully follow the law, but instead only because it understandably lacked the prescience to predict that this Court would carve out an exception to a well-known rule of law that has nearly universal application.