Court Opinion

ID: 9490081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:32:14.616093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:53.200654
License: Public Domain

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur with the majority’s result and join in much of its reasoning. However, I would base the result solely on the majority’s statutory rationale. That is, although I do not think the question free from doubt, I agree that the bankruptcy court in this case and the Third Circuit in In re University Medical Center, 973 F.2d 1065 (3rd Cir.1992), concluded without adequate authority that the bankruptcy code modifies the Medicare statute’s explicit scheme for defining the government’s liability to service providers. While any act of the bankruptcy court under the code is in a sense in breach of the source of law that gives rise to the obligation that the bankruptcy court reduces or extinguishes, this does not imply that the bankruptcy court is empowered by the code to depart from the statutory definition of the obligation in the first instance. To that extent, I think the bankruptcy court has overreached, and I concur in the reversal.
As I think the first rationale is sufficient, I do not join the majority in deciding the second question as to what constitutes a single “transaction.” While I am not convinced that the majority is incorrect, neither am I convinced that it is necessary to create a precedent on that question which might arise in some other context. With that one reservation, I join the majority’s opinion and result.