Court Opinion

ID: 9478787
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:58:05.783476+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:37.125673
License: Public Domain

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Intending to startle or scare Jones, Hartley threw a lighted firecracker into the basement where Jones was working. Hartley did this knowing that the air in the basement was heavy with gasoline fumes, that gasoline fumes are flammable, that a firecracker creates heat when it explodes, and that heat causes gasoline fumes to explode. He also knew *396that the first employee sent to the basement to do the job that day had refused to stay there because of the overpowering fumes, and that Jones had been in the basement using gasoline for at least one and perhaps closer to two hours when the explosion occurred. As a result of Hart-ley’s deliberate act (which clearly amounted to an assault upon Jones), Jones suffered burns on 29% of his body. Some $40,000 in medical expenses later, and having endured much pain and suffering, Jones was discharged from the Kansas University Hospital Burn Center with readily discernible scars on his face, neck, arms, and other parts of his body.
Both the bankruptcy court and the district court properly considered our decisions in Cassidy v. Minihan, 794 F.2d 340 (8th Cir.1986), and In re Long, 774 F.2d 875 (8th Cir.1985). Analyzing the present case within the legal framework established by Cassidy and Long, the bankruptcy court found that Hartley’s conduct “was far more culpable than the reckless disregard standard, and in fact meets the test of intentional harm.” Based on its finding that Hartley had intentionally inflicted injury upon Jones, the bankruptcy court held Jones’s claim against Hartley nondis-chargeable. In affirming that decision, the district court emphasized, as had the bankruptcy court, that throwing a lighted firecracker into a room filled with gasoline and paint fumes is substantially certain to cause an explosion, that an objectively reasonable person could not fail to know this, and thus that Hartley must have known that his act was substantially certain to cause injury to Jones. Consistent with Cassidy and Long, the court therefore held that Jones’s injury was malicious within the meaning of 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(6).
None of the bankruptcy court’s findings of fact is clearly erroneous, and the conclusion that Jones’s claim is nondischargeable under § 523(a)(6) follows as a matter of law. The majority opinion, ante at page 395, correctly points out that for a claim to be nondischargeable under this statute, the injury to the creditor, as distinguished from the action of the debtor which caused the accident, must have been intentional. The majority opinion goes astray, however, by failing to recognize that here the bankruptcy court has made a finding that the injury to Jones was intentional. It cannot be seriously argued that this finding is clearly erroneous. I therefore believe that the order of the district court should be affirmed.1

. It seems to me that a claim for injury resulting from an assault, which is what we have here, should always be nondischargeable under § 523(a)(6). More broadly, I doubt that Congress intended that claims for injuries resulting from intentional torts should be dischargeable. Certainly, we should not lightly infer that Congress has created a safe haven in the Bankruptcy Code for intentional tortfeasors. In this case, however, there is no need to pursue this line of inquiry, since the bankruptcy court has made a specific finding of intentional injury to Jones.