Court Opinion

ID: 9637487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:07:39.897854+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:56.491776
License: Public Domain

AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judge
(concurring in result).
I concur in the result reached by the majority. I see no ground, however, for protesting against a rule which I believe is implicit in the decisions of the Supreme Court in Oriel v. Russell (Prela v. Hubshman), 278 U.S. 358, 49 S.Ct. 173, 175, 73 L.Ed. 419. Though the appeal in Prela v. Hubshman was from a commitment order, the. same question arose which confronts us hére, namely, whether the bankrupt still remained in possession of the assets he was shown to have withheld from his trustee. The turnover order in Prela v. Hubshman was made about twenty months after the date of the petition in bankruptcy and the commitment order about fourteen months after the date of the *845turnover order. Nevertheless, all the justices of a court of which those exceptionally alert guardians of civil rights, Justices Holmes, Brandéis and Stone, were members, unanimously concurred in the opinion of Chief Justice Taft, which quoted with approval the remarks of Judge McPherson of the Third Circuit in Re Epstein, 206 F. 568, 569, and concluded by saying: “In the two cases before us, the contemnors had ample opportunity in the original hearing to be heard as to the fact of concealment, and in the motion for the contempt to show their inability to comply with the turnover order. They did not succeed in meeting the burden which was necessarily theirs in each case, * *
I can see no essential difference between the procedure in these bankruptcy turnover orders and that employed in the case of decrees to enforce payment of alimony or restitution by an embezzling trustee. Nor am I persuaded that the creditors of thieving bankrupts should he curtailed in employing the only practical means of obtaining restitution and one which frequently results in substantial recoveries.