Court Opinion

ID: 9481170
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:10:29.084734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:08.586941
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur with the result the court reaches today and write separately only to express my view that the district court did not err in holding that the contemporaneous requirement of 12 U.S.C. § 1823(e)(2) was not met, and that Manatt has not established accord and satisfaction as an affirmative defense.
In ruling that the contemporaneous requirement was not met, the district court discussed the recent decision of the Supreme Court in United States v. Langley, 484 U.S. 86, 108 S.Ct. 396, 98 L.Ed.2d 340 (1987), as do both parties on appeal. The facts in Langley are different than those before us. In Langley, the appellants purchased real estate from a bank in exchange for a note. The appellants claimed that they were induced to buy the property by the bank’s verbal misrepresentations about the amount and characteristics of the land it was conveying. 484 U.S. at 87, 108 S.Ct. at 399.
*490Langley’s holding is narrow and is relevant only with respect to the contemporaneous requirement. In discussing section 1823(e), Langley referred to the word “agreement” in the statute as meaning an agreement that is executed and becomes a bank record contemporaneously with “the making of the note.” Id. at 92, 108 S.Ct. at 401. The district court looked closely at Langley when determining that the contemporaneous requirement was not met.
The parties differ in their interpretation of the phrase “any asset” in section 1823(e). Manatt would limit this phrase to the collateral he and his wife surrendered in the Mutual Agreement. Manatt argues that he, his wife and the bank signed the agreement contemporaneously with the transfer of title in the collateral to the bank, thereby satisfying section 1823(e)(2).
The FDIC argues that “any asset” refers to the notes that it is attempting to collect. If the notes are the “assets” in question, the contemporaneousness requirement is not met by the Mutual Agreement because the notes were transferred to the bank long before the parties entered the Mutual Agreement.
The district court concluded that the FDIC’s interpretation of the statute, that section 1823(e)(2) applies to “any asset acquired by it,” was the correct view. Ma-natt tries to use the Mutual Agreement to defeat the FDIC’s interest in notes that the FDIC purchased from Corning Bank. In this factual setting, the assets at issue — • the assets that the FDIC is interested in and the assets that Manatt wants to avoid — are the seven promissory notes found in the bank’s vault. Since the Mutual Agreement would diminish the FDIC’s interest in assets it acquired, and the agreement was not executed at the same time Scott Manatt signed any of the original notes over to Corning Bank, that agreement does not comply with section 1823(e)(2) and is not valid.
This interpretation may make accord and satisfaction inapplicable when the FDIC purchases a bank’s assets, since parties can never reach an accord and satisfaction that compromises a debt at the same time they create an original debt obligation.5 By enacting section 1823(e), Congress was addressing the particular problem posed by the FDIC purchasing assets of a failed bank and agreements that might be used to diminish or defeat the interest of the FDIC in the assets. While an accord and satisfaction in which a bank accepted assets worth $136,000 to extinguish a debt of $387,266 may be of substantial concern to the board of directors and stockholders of a bank with continuing vitality, when the bank fails and must be taken over by the government as insurer of the bank’s depositors, public concerns then arise. I believe that the district court correctly applied the statute, and I would affirm its holding on this basis. The wisdom of the Act of Congress is an issue we do not consider.

. This has particular application where a debtor attempts to reach an accord and satisfaction but fails to fully satisfy the terms of the accord before the FDIC takes control of a failing bank. This was the situation in Manatt’s case. Manatt did not retrieve the notes from Corning, nor did Corning mark the notes "paid.” In fact, because the Eagans received a discharge in bankruptcy for the $50,000 note, Manatt has never fully satisfied his obligations under the terms of the Collateral Agreement. I would also affirm the district court’s ruling on accord and satisfaction.