Plaza Bank v. Alan Green; Alan Green Family Trust

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
PLAZA BANK,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
ALAN GREEN; ALAN GREEN FAMILY
TRUST,
Defendants - Appellants.
No. 13-15100
D.C. No. 2:11-cv-00130-MMD-
RJJ
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Miranda Du, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted April 15, 2015 **
San Francisco California
Before: SCHROEDER and N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judges and GLEASON, ***
District Judge.
FILED
APR 17 2015
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
*** The Honorable Sharon L. Gleason, United States District Judge for
the District of Alaska, sitting by designation.

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Defendants-Appellants Alan Green and the Alan Green Family Trust appeal
the judgment in favor of plaintiff-appellee Plaza Bank. The district court granted
summary judgment for the bank on its claim that the appellants fraudulently
transferred property to avoid the bank’s claim. The district court dismissed the
appellant’s counterclaims without leave to amend. We affirm.
The district court applied Nevada’s Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act
(“UFTA”), codified in Chapter 112 of the Nevada Revised Statutes, to the
appellants’ property transfers and held they were fraudulent. The appellants
contend that the district court erred, on the theory that applying the UFTA to the
Trust’s transfers conflicts with other Nevada statutory law giving fiduciaries
unfettered discretion to transfer property any time and for any purpose. See Nev.
Rev. Stat. § 163.270.
The appellants cite no authority for the contention that the UFTA should not
apply to trusts in the same way it applies to other persons. To the contrary, the
Nevada Revised Statutes explicitly define “person” to include trusts. Nev. Rev.
Stat. § 0.039 (defining “person” as “a natural person, any form of business or
social organization and any other nongovernmental legal entity including, but not
limited to, a corporation, association, trust, or unincorporated organization”)
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(emphasis added); see also Nev. Rev. Stat. § 112.150 (UFTA definitions)
(“‘Debtor’ means a person who is liable on a claim.”) (emphasis added).
For purposes of the UFTA, it is also irrelevant whether the transferred
properties secured the creditor’s claim. The statute applies when there is a claim,
regardless of whether or not it is secured. See Nev. Rev. Stat. § 112.150(3), (4)
(defining “creditor” as any person who has a claim, and “claim” as any “right to
payment, whether or not the right is reduced to judgment, liquidated, unliquidated .
. . secured, or unsecured”).
The district court also properly concluded that the Trust’s transfer of cash
proceeds from a property sale to Green personally was fraudulent under Section
112.190 of the UFTA. See Nev. Rev. Stat. § 112.190. The district court cited six
indicia of fraud surrounding the transfer, which the appellants fail to rebut. See
Sportsco Enters. v. Morris, 917 P.2d 934, 938 (Nev. 1996) (shifting the burden of
rebutting indicia of fraud to the debtor once a creditor establishes inadequacy of
consideration and the debtor’s insolvency). The appellants have shown no
antecedent debt the transfer was made to satisfy, nor any contemporaneous transfer
of property or value. See Nev. Rev. Stat. § 112.170.
Nor did the district court err by holding Green personally liable as the
transferee of the fraudulent sale proceeds under Nevada Revised Statute Section
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112.220(2)(a). There is a good faith defense to liability for such transfers, see
Herup v. First Boston Fin., LLC, 162 P.3d 870, 876 (Nev. 2007), but it does not
help Green. As trustee of the Trust, Green conceived of and executed the transfer,
and thus cannot show that he objectively had no reason to know of the transfer’s
fraudulent purpose. See id. (establishing that the good faith defense requires
transferees of fraudulent transfers to “show objectively that he or she did not know
or had no reason to know of the transferor’s fraudulent purpose”).
Finally, the district court did not err by dismissing the appellants’
counterclaims for breach of contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and
fair dealing without leave to amend. There was no legal basis for the
counterclaims and thus any factual amendment would have been futile. See
Thinket Ink Info. Res., Inc. v. Sun Microsystems, Inc., 368 F.3d 1053, 1061 (9th
Cir. 2004).
AFFIRMED.
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