The Sixth Circuit’s Bankruptcy Appellate Panel laid down rules for deciding who wins a bar fight, and the winner in court is not necessarily the one who got his lights punched out.
The case involved a late-night altercation fueled by copious amounts of alcohol consumption. The evidence was typically conflicting, with everyone claiming to be the victim rather than the aggressor.
Although one combatant outweighed the other by 60 pounds, the larger pugilist ended up on his back, with broken facial bones caused by one punch from his smaller opponent.
The winner of the fight was arrested and pleaded nolo contendere to a criminal charge of assault and battery. He filed bankruptcy after being sued for damages.
The loser in the fight, who happened to be a lawyer, filed an adversary proceeding to declare that his damages from sustaining willful and malicious injuries were not dischargeable under Section 523(a)(6). After trial, the bankruptcy judge discharged the debt, concluding that the bankrupt did not inflict the injury willfully because he did not know it would cause the damage that resulted.
On appeal, the appellate panel reversed in an opinion by Bankruptcy Judge Joan A. Lloyd from Louisville, Ky. She held that the bankruptcy judge misapplied the law, although the findings of fact were unassailable under the clearly erroneous standard.
The law is clear, according to Judge Lloyd. Anyone who throws a punch automatically satisfies the willfulness requirement in Section 523(a)(6). The plaintiff need not prove that the aggressor intended to cause the resulting injury.
In a bar fight, the determinative issue instead is the “maliciousness” half of the dischargeability question. Judge Lloyd said that “self-defense can constitute a justifiable excuse for a defendant’s actions and negate a claim of malice.”
Remember this when contemplating a fistfight in Michigan: According to state law and the similar Restatement (Second) of Torts, someone not engaged in a crime may use non-deadly force whenever he or she “reasonably believes” that force is required to defend against “imminent unlawful use of force by another individual,” even if retreat is possible. (Try going through that checklist if you are inebriated and someone is about to punch you in the kisser.)
The appellate panel reversed and remanded, directing the bankruptcy judge to apply the law of self-defense on the question of malice, with the debtor bearing the burden of proof on that issue.
Judge Lloyd said that the plea of nolo contendere is inadmissible in evidence under Rule 410 of the Federal Rules of Evidence.