Ninth Circuit Creates New Standard to Determine Whether to Apply Jud...

By: Joshua Nadelbach

St. John’s Law Student

American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review Staff

Rejecting the majority view, in Ah Quin v. County of Kauai Dept. of Transp.,[1]  the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court for the District of Hawaii and held that the district court applied the judicial estoppel doctrine too broadly.[2] Specifically, the Ninth Circuit held that if a plaintiff-debtor (1) claims that her failure to list a pending lawsuit in a bankruptcy schedule was due to a “mistake” or “inadvertence” and (2) seeks to reopen the bankruptcy proceeding, then the court must first examine the plaintiff-debtor’s subjective intent regarding how he or she filled out the schedule before deciding that the judicial estoppel applies.[3] The court explained that if a plaintiff-debtor’s omission occurred by accident or was made without the intent to conceal the pending lawsuit, judicial estoppel should not bar the plaintiff-debtor’s pending lawsuit.[4]

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