DENNIS, Circuit Judge:
Acting on our own motion, in order to correct error in our prior opinion, Janvey v. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Inc., 699 F.3d 848 (5th Cir.2012), we withdraw that opinion and substitute the following:
R. Allen Stanford ("Stanford") created and perpetrated a "Ponzi scheme"
The Securities and Exchange Commission ("the SEC") brought a civil suit against Stanford, his agents, and his corporations on February 16, 2009, charging multiple violations of federal securities laws. The SEC asked the district court to appoint a receiver for Stanford and his companies in order to preserve the Stanford corporations' resources and pursue the corporations' assets that were in the hands of third parties as the result of fraudulent conveyances. The court obliged, appointing Ralph S. Janvey ("the Receiver") as receiver over Stanford, his associates, his corporations, and their assets on February 16, 2009.
Pursuant to his duty as court-appointed receiver, Janvey filed this fraudulent-transfer suit on February 19, 2010 against several national political committees (collectively, "the Committees")
At the threshold, we confront and correct errors of law pertaining to standing and imputed knowledge, relied on by the parties and the district court and based on this court's erroneous prior, withdrawn opinions, that could otherwise affect
The leading case explaining the principles that govern a federally appointed receiver's action under a state law adopting the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act ("UFTA") to recover assets that the operator of a Ponzi scheme caused to be fraudulently transferred to a third party without fair consideration is Scholes v. Lehmann, 56 F.3d 750 (7th Cir.1995), cert. denied sub nom. African Enter., Inc. v. Scholes, 516 U.S. 1028, 116 S.Ct. 673, 133 L.Ed.2d 522 (1995). In that case, Judge Posner explained that an equity receiver may sue to redress only injuries to the entity in receivership, id. at 753 (citing Caplin v. Marine Midland Grace Trust Co., 406 U.S. 416, 92 S.Ct. 1678, 32 L.Ed.2d 195 (1972)), but that a receiver may sue on behalf of the receivership entity under a state uniform-fraudulent-transfer law to recover assets fraudulently transferred by the Ponzi-scheme principal without commensurate consideration to third parties. Id. at 753-55. In Eberhard v. Marcu, the Second Circuit summarized Scholes as follows:
530 F.3d 122, 132 (2d Cir.2008) (footnote omitted) (citations omitted).
In Scholes, the court added: "Put differently, the defense of in pari delicto loses its sting when the person who is in pari delicto is eliminated." 56 F.3d at 754-55 (citing McCandless v. Furlaud, 296 U.S. 140, 160, 56 S.Ct. 41, 80 L.Ed. 121 (1935), and Albers v. Continental Ill. Bank & Trust Co., 296 Ill.App. 596, 17 N.E.2d 67 (1938)). The court went on: "Now that the corporations created and initially controlled by Douglas are controlled by a receiver whose only object is to maximize the value of the corporations for the benefit of their investors and any creditors, we cannot see an objection to the receiver's bringing suit to recover corporate assets unlawfully dissipated by Douglas." Id.
The rationale of Scholes, which allows a federal equity receiver to assert the claims of a receivership entity against third-party recipients of the entity's assets that have been fraudulently transferred by the principal of the Ponzi scheme has been endorsed by this court and several other federal courts of appeals
The district court's error in misidentifying the basis for the Receiver's standing to bring this action, viz., that he was bringing it on behalf of the Stanford corporations' investor-creditors instead of the corporate entities, is harmless and therefore does not justify reversal of the district court's judgment. The district court's order appointing the Receiver invests him with the full powers of an equity receiver under common law as well as certain enumerated powers, including the power to take and have complete control, possession, and custody of the receivership estate and over any assets traceable to assets owned by the estate; to collect, marshal, and take custody of all assets of the estate, wherever situated, and all sums of money owed to the estate; and to institute actions or proceedings to impose a constructive trust, obtain possession, and recover judgment with respect to persons or entities who received assets or records traceable to the receivership estate. The district court's order, however, does not authorize the Receiver to represent the creditors of the corporations in receivership in asserting claims against third persons. The Receiver's original complaint against the Committees alleges, gives notice of, and states a claim by the Receiver on behalf of the Stanford corporations and does not raise a claim on behalf of the creditors of the estate. Specifically, the complaint alleges that Stanford, Davis, and the Stanford corporations contributed more than $1.8 million of the corporations' ill-gotten gains to the Committees. The complaint seeks a judgment that the payments from Stanford, Davis, and the Stanford corporations to the Committees constitute fraudulent transfers under applicable law; that the transferred funds are property of the receivership estate held pursuant to a constructive trust for the benefit of the estate; and that the Committees are liable to the receivership estate for an amount equaling the amount of funds transferred by Stanford, Davis, and the Stanford corporations to the Committees. Both sides are well aware of Scholes and the jurisprudence it has generated; they have cited it prominently in their briefs for propositions favorable to their respective litigation positions while disregarding aspects of Scholes that they each deem unfavorable to their causes.
Because the presence of at least one petitioner with standing is sufficient to satisfy Article III's case-or-controversy requirement, the presence of that party, and its standing, makes it unnecessary to consider whether others do as well. Horne v. Flores, 557 U.S. 433, 445, 129 S.Ct. 2579, 174 L.Ed.2d 406 (2009); Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Inst. Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47, 53 n. 2, 126 S.Ct. 1297, 164 L.Ed.2d 156 (2006). Moreover, we may affirm a grant of summary judgment on any ground supported by the record, even if it is different from that relied upon by the district court. See Salazar v. Dretke, 419 F.3d 384, 394 (5th Cir.2005); Holtzclaw v. DSC Commc'ns Corp., 255 F.3d 254, 258 (5th Cir.2001); Tex. Refrigeration Supply, Inc. v. FDIC, 953 F.2d 975, 980 (5th Cir.1992).
The Committees present two principal arguments on appeal: first, that the Receiver's TUFTA claim was untimely, and second that the claim is preempted by federal law.
The Committees argue that the Receiver's TUFTA claims are barred as untimely for several reasons. First, the Committees argue that because the Stanford corporations had knowledge of the contributions when they were made between 2000 and 2009, TUFTA's four-year period for bringing a fraudulent-conveyance action, and the one-year period for filing suit after discovery of the fraudulent transfers, elapsed before the Receiver was appointed in 2009. However, we have already rejected this argument in the foregoing section discussing standing and knowledge in Ponzi-scheme cases. Because the Stanford corporations were the robotic tools of Stanford's Ponzi scheme, knowledge of the fraud could not be imputed to them while they were under Stanford's coercion. Consequently, the Committees are not entitled to summary judgment or dismissal of this suit based on the theory that knowledge of the fraudulent transfers were imputed to the Stanford corporations so as to bar the Receiver from asserting their claims to set aside the fraudulent transfers to the Committees.
Second, the Committees assert that they are entitled to summary judgment because the Receiver either discovered or reasonably could have discovered the donations to the Committees more than a year before he filed suit because when the donations were made they were registered with a federal agency and reported in the public news media. This argument is without merit. Under TUFTA (and as discussed more fully below), a fraudulent-conveyance claim does not accrue until the claimant knew or reasonably could have known both of the transfer and that it was fraudulent in nature. Further, a defendant moving for summary judgment on the affirmative defense of limitations must prove that defense conclusively. The Committees failed in this respect because they presented no evidence to show that the Receiver knew or could reasonably have known for more than one year prior to filing suit that the donations to the Committees were fraudulent conveyances that had been made during the operation of a Ponzi scheme and using funds from the Stanford corporations that were proceeds of that scheme. On the other hand,
Through TUFTA, Texas has incorporated the UFTA into its law.
Under TUFTA, a fraudulent-transfer claim is "extinguished" if not brought "within four years after the transfer was made ... or, if later, within one year after the transfer ... was or could reasonably have been discovered by the claimant." TEX. BUS. & COM.CODE § 24.010(a)(1). With respect to the latter portion of the statute, the discovery rule, Texas courts of appeals have held that section 24.010(a)(1) requires that a fraudulent-transfer claim be filed within one year of when the fraudulent nature of the transfer was or reasonably
In light of the foregoing decisions by the Texas courts of appeals, and in view of the majority of authorities in other jurisdictions interpreting the UFTA discovery rule, we Erie guess that the Texas Supreme Court would conclude that section 24.010(a)(1) of TUFTA requires that a fraudulent-transfer claim must be filed within one year after the fraudulent nature of the transfer is discovered or reasonably could have been discovered.
Texas appeals courts have held that under TUFTA, "[a] defendant moving for summary judgment on the affirmative defense of limitations has the burden to establish that defense conclusively." Johnston v. Crook, 93 S.W.3d 263, 269 (Tex. App.2002) (citing KPMG Peat Marwick v. Harrison Cnty. Hous. Fin. Corp., 988 S.W.2d 746, 748 (Tex.1999)). "Thus, the defendant must (1) conclusively prove when the cause of action accrued, and (2) negate the discovery rule, if it applies and has been pleaded or otherwise raised, by proving as a matter of law there is no genuine issue of material fact about when the plaintiff discovered, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the nature of its injury." Id. (citing
On the other hand, a receiver bringing a TUFTA action is dramatically assisted by other legal principles if he can prove that the transfers in question were made by the principal of a Ponzi scheme. "This court has held that transfers from a Ponzi scheme are presumptively made with intent to defraud, because a Ponzi scheme is, `as a matter of law, insolvent from its inception.'" Am. Cancer Soc. v. Cook, 675 F.3d 524, 527 (5th Cir.2012) (quoting Byron, 436 F.3d at 558-59). Further, we have described a Ponzi scheme as "a fraudulent investment scheme in which money contributed by later investors generates artificially high dividends or returns for the original investors, whose example attracts even larger investments." Id. (quoting Alguire II, 647 F.3d at 597) (internal quotation marks omitted).
In the present case, applying the foregoing principles, we conclude that the Committees have failed to carry their burden of demonstrating conclusively that the Receiver did not timely file this TUFTA action because they have failed to show that the Receiver knew or reasonably could have discovered that the donations to the Committees were fraudulent in nature more than one year before he filed this suit.
The record does not reflect that the Receiver had any feasible means to discover whether the donations to the Committees were fraudulent in nature other than to have an expert examine the books and records of Stanford, SIBL, and the Stanford corporations to determine whether the receivership entities had been part of a Ponzi scheme so that the donations of their funds to the Committees would be presumed, as a matter of law, to have been fraudulent. Furthermore, the Committees have not described or presented evidence of any other feasible course the Receiver could have taken. Persons within the SEC suspected Stanford and his corporations of operating a Ponzi scheme of the kind Van Tassel found and described. But without an expert's examination of the corporations' books and records, no outsider, including the SEC, could have known or discovered probative evidence that Stanford had operated a Ponzi scheme from at least 1999 forward or that the funds behind the contributions to the Committees had come from corporations that Stanford coerced and used in his scheme.
The record does not reflect exactly when the Receiver or Van Tassel knew or could reasonably have known that Stanford had operated a Ponzi scheme as early as 1999 or that funds from his corporate tools were used to make the donations to the Committees. But a careful examination of the evidence in support of, and in opposition to, the motions for summary judgment reflects that neither the Receiver nor his expert reasonably could have known or discovered probative evidence of the Ponzi scheme more than one year prior to the Receiver's filing of this suit on February 19, 2010. Remember, the SEC filed its suit against Stanford, his corporations, and his associates on February 16, 2009, and that same day the district court restrained Stanford, et al., from disposing of assets, books, or records of the corporations, assumed exclusive jurisdiction and possession of the same, appointed Janvey the Receiver over the receivership's assets and spelled out his authority and duties, including taking possession of all receivership assets, books, and records, and tracing the dissipated or diverted assets of the receivership entities.
Turning to the Receiver's motion for summary judgment, we conclude that the evidence presented to the district court overwhelmingly established that, from at least as early as 1999, the Stanford corporations were nothing more than robotic tools of Stanford's elaborate Ponzi scheme and that the funds used to make the donations to the Committees were taken by Stanford and Davis, directly or indirectly, out of the Stanford corporations' proceeds from the sales of the fraudulent CDs.
On August 27, 2009, Davis was rear-raigned and pleaded guilty to a number of offenses, the basic elements of which were that he knowingly defrauded investors who purchased CDs from SIBL and that he also conspired to obstruct an SEC investigation into SIBL. Davis agreed to the following factual basis for his guilty plea: from at least 1999 through February 2009, Davis, along with Stanford and others, orchestrated a scheme whereby investors were duped into investing more than $5 billion into a CD program at SIBL, located in Antigua, which Davis and Stanford had advertised would be reinvested in safe and secure investments but which were in fact used to perpetrate a massive Ponzi scheme. Further, as early as 1990, Davis as controller and then as CFO of SIBL, at Stanford's request, began making false entries into the books and records of SIBL, reflecting false earnings and assets that were shown on SIBL's annual reports filed with the Antigua bank regulators. SIBL's base of operations was in Houston, Texas, along with its parent company, Stanford Financial Group. And from the offices of these entities, false financial disclosures were manufactured and mailed to investors, and over $2 billion in loans to Stanford were not disclosed to them. Also, real estate owned by SIBL was listed as being worth billions of dollars when in fact it was worth no more than $100 million. Finally, undisclosed to investors were the facts that Stanford paid the Antigua bank regulators hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to not examine SIBL's books and that he paid an ostensibly independent Antiguan auditing firm more than hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to dishonestly audit SIBL's financial condition.
Through forensic accounting of the business records of the corporations and other records obtained from third parties and financial institutions, Van Tassel discovered that the Stanford corporations did not make investments from the proceeds of the sale of CDs in high-quality securities as promised to investors. Instead, the returns and redemptions on the investors' CDs were wholly funded by new principal investments into the Stanford corporations. Ultimately, in her two declarations included in the Receiver's motion for summary judgment and by evaluating the actual assets of the Stanford corporations over a nine-year period reaching back to December 31, 1999, Van Tassel concluded that the Stanford companies were insolvent entities used by Stanford in a Ponzi scheme from at least 1999 because the corporations were funded and sustained primarily by proceeds from SIBL's sale of the fraudulent CDs. Yet SIBL's assets consisted chiefly of "financial assets" whose fair market value was much smaller than reported and of Stanford's worthless
Considering all of the summary-judgment evidence that the Receiver presented to the district court, including Van Tassel's declarations and supporting documents, Davis's guilty plea and rearraignment statements, and the lack of any cogent countervailing summary-judgment evidence introduced by the Committees, we conclude that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the Receiver is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.
Finally, and related to their argument regarding to the discovery rule, the Committees assert that the district court abused its discretion in denying their discovery request (a motion to compel) and that they were prejudiced as a result. Specifically, the Committees requested that the Receiver be compelled to produce correspondence relating to, and several drafts of, documents that he had issued regarding the contributions made to the Committees. The Committees claim that the documents may contain metadata indicating that they were created before February 19, 2009. The Receiver refused on multiple grounds, but a common thread was that the requested documents and correspondence were protected by attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine. However, the Receiver provided the Committees with a log of the documents that were withheld, and the district court reviewed the documents in camera and determined that they did not fall under the exception to the privilege and the doctrine outlined in Conkling v. Turner, 883 F.2d 431 (5th Cir.1989).
On appeal, the Committees do not dispute that the documents are privileged. Rather, the Committees contend that the Conkling exception applies because the materials sought will help determine when the Receiver discovered, or reasonably could have discovered, the contributions made to the Committees. However, as previously discussed, the ultimate question is when the Receiver knew or could reasonably have known about the fraudulent nature of the contributions, not just their existence. Thus, the district court would have been obliged to find the Conkling exception inapplicable if none of the sealed documents tended to show that the Receiver, prior to the crucial date, not only knew that the contributions had been made but also that they had been made with fraudulent intent.
Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the district court erred in not applying the Conkling exception, the Committees have failed to preserve this issue for appeal by failing to provide any meaningful way to review the disputed
Furthermore, insofar as the Committees suggest that the district court's in camera review of the hardcopy documents was inadequate because it did not include the metadata itself, their argument is waived because they did not raise it until their reply brief. E.g., Medina Cnty. Envtl. Action Ass'n v. Surface Transp. Bd., 602 F.3d 687, 702 (5th Cir.2010). Consequently, we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion in denying the Committees' discovery request.
The Committees' fourth argument is that federal campaign finance law preempts the Receiver's TUFTA claims. "Preemption can take multiple forms: Congress can expressly preempt state law in federal statutory language, or it can impliedly preempt state law." Castro v. Collecto, Inc., 634 F.3d 779, 785 (5th Cir. 2011). Implied preemption may take two forms: field preemption and conflict preemption. Id. Field preemption applies "where federal law `is sufficiently comprehensive to make reasonable the inference that Congress `left no room' for supplementary state regulation,' or `the federal interest [in the field] is so dominant' that it `preclude[s] enforcement of state laws on the same subject.'" Id. (quoting Hillsborough Cnty., Fla. v. Automated Med. Labs., Inc., 471 U.S. 707, 713, 105 S.Ct. 2371, 85 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985)) (citations omitted). Conflict preemption applies "(1) where complying with both federal law and state law is impossible; or (2) where the state law `creates an unacceptable obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.'" Id. (quoting Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555, 563-64, 129 S.Ct. 1187, 173 L.Ed.2d 51 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted)). Reviewing each form of preemption, we conclude that none applies and that, therefore, the Receiver's TUFTA claim is not preempted.
The Committees argue that FECA expressly preempts the Receiver's TUFTA claim because it preempts "any provision of State law with respect to election to federal office." 2 U.S.C. § 453. We disagree.
TUFTA is a general state law that happens to apply to federal political committees in the instant case. In cases like this one, we have rejected express preemption arguments and construed § 453 narrowly. For instance, in Karl Rove & Co. v. Thornburgh, 39 F.3d 1273 (5th Cir.1994), we rejected a federal candidate's argument that FECA preempted a company's state law cause of action against him for the debts of his campaign committee:
Id. at 1280 (footnotes and citations omitted); see also Stern v. Gen. Electric Co., 924 F.2d 472 (2d Cir.1991) (holding that § 453 does not preempt a state law establishing a company's directors' fiduciary duty to shareholders, including not wasting corporate assets, and explaining that "the narrow wording of [§ 453] suggests that Congress did not intend to preempt state regulation with respect to non-election-related activities"); Reeder v. Kans. City Bd. of Police Comm'ers, 733 F.2d 543 (8th Cir.1984) (holding that § 453 did not preempt a state law prohibiting officers or employees of the Kansas City Police Department from making any political contribution); Friends of Phil Gramm v. Ams. for Phil Gramm in '84, 587 F.Supp. 769 (E.D.Va.1984) (holding that § 453 did not preempt a state law prohibiting unauthorized use of a person's name for advertising or commercial purposes).
The cases that the Committees cite are all inapposite because they pertain to state laws that specifically regulated federal campaign finance in contravention of FECA's preemption provision. See Teper v. Miller, 82 F.3d 989 (11th Cir.1996) (state law effectively prohibiting Georgia legislators from accepting donations for a federal campaign while the state General Assembly was in session); Bunning v. Ky., 42 F.3d 1008 (6th Cir.1994) (state law authorizing investigation of campaign expenditures of a federal political committee); Weber v. Heaney, 995 F.2d 872 (8th Cir. 1993) (state law establishing system under which federal congressional candidates could agree to limit their federal expenditures in exchange for state funding for their campaigns).
Nor does TUFTA implicate the core concerns of FECA. As the Receiver correctly explains, he does not seek a refund of the contributions. Rather, TUFTA entitles Janvey to "recover judgment for the value of the asset[s] transferred[] ... or the amount necessary to satisfy the creditor's claim, whichever is less." TEX. BUS. & COM.CODE § 24.009(b).
The Committees next argue that field preemption applies. However, because Congress has not occupied the field with regard to claims like those brought under TUFTA and because courts have consistently indicated that FECA's preemptive scope is narrow in light of its legislative history, see, e.g., Karl Rove, 39 F.3d at 1281; Stern, 924 F.2d at 475 n. 3; Weber, 995 F.2d at 876, we conclude that field preemption does not apply.
First, the Committees contend that § 441a-k of FECA states a "comprehensive list" of illegal sources for campaign contributions
Second, the FEC, in advisory opinions cited by the district court, has ruled that candidates and political committees remain subject to state contract law. FEC Adv. Op. 1989-02 at 2 (Apr. 25, 1989); FEC Adv. Op. 1975-102 at 1 (Jan. 29, 1976). This suggests that Congress had no intention to "occupy the field" with regard to campaign finance such that state fraudulent transfer laws would be preempted. Given this, field preemption does not apply.
Finally, we conclude that conflict preemption does not apply here. First, the Committees argue that because FECA does not designate fraudulent transfers as illegal, TUFTA must conflict with FECA. This is a rehashing of the Committee's argument regarding field preemption — namely, that because § 441a-k of FECA states a "comprehensive list" of illegal sources for campaign contributions, TUFTA impermissibly designates another source of "illegal" contributions by allowing the Receiver's claims — which we have already rejected. Accordingly, for the same reason that field preemption does not apply on this basis, neither does conflict preemption.
Second, the Committees maintain that the Receiver's TUFTA claims conflict with the BCRA's soft money provisions. They submit that because the BCRA requires them to dispose of all soft money, they may not be compelled, under state law, to return that money. We find this argument unpersuasive. It depends on characterizing the Receiver's TUFTA claim as a refund, which as previously discussed is inaccurate. The Receiver does not seek recovery of the exact soft-money funds that the Committees assert have now been spent. See TEX. BUS. & COM.CODE § 24.009(b) ("[T]he creditor may recover judgment for the value of the asset transferred[]... or the amount necessary to satisfy the creditor's claim, whichever is less."). Nor does the fact that the original funds have been spent preclude the Receiver from asserting his claim. See, e.g., Donell, 533 F.3d at 776 & n. 9 (noting, in a fraudulent transfer case, that claims may often arise "years after the money has been received and spent" by the recipient but explaining that such claims are nonetheless permitted). Accordingly, conflict preemption does not apply.
For these reasons, we AFFIRM the district court's judgment.