Tzu Ling Hsu v. MTC Financial, Inc.

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUN 30 2017
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
In re: TZU LING HSU, No. 16-55454
Debtor. D.C. No. 2:15-cv-09836-AG
______________________________
TZU LING HSU, MEMORANDUM*
Appellant,
v.
MTC FINANCIAL, INC.,
Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Andrew J. Guilford, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted June 7, 2017**
Pasadena, California
Before: GRABER and MURGUIA, Circuit Judges, and BOLTON,*** District
Judge.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 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 Susan R. Bolton, United States District Judge for the
District of Arizona, sitting by designation.
Debtor Tzu Ling Hsu (“Debtor”) appeals the district court’s order dismissing
her bankruptcy appeal as untimely. We have subject matter jurisdiction under 28
U.S.C. §§ 158(d), 1291 and review the decision of the district court de novo.
Barclay v. Mackenzie (In re AFI Holding, Inc.), 525 F.3d 700, 702 (9th Cir. 2008).
Debtor argues that her appeal was timely because she filed her appeal to the
district court the day after a scheduled ECF outage, specifically arguing that
because ECF was unavailable for a portion of the deadline date, she could file the
following day. We disagree and affirm the order of the district court.
While there is ordinarily mandatory electronic case filing, local bankruptcy
rules make clear that despite an ECF outage, Debtor’s proper recourse on the
deadline was to file a paper hard copy by November 30 at midnight, not to wait
another day as if the clerk was "unavailable" under the Federal Rules of
Bankruptcy Procedure. The Central District of California’s Court Manual,1 which
is explicitly incorporated into the local bankruptcy rules, contemplates the situation
here. In the section labeled CM/ECF Outage Procedures (defined in part as
scheduled outages), the Manual says that a litigant "should file a hard copy of the
1
The Central District of California Bankruptcy Court notes that "[t]he Court
Manual is an adjunct to the LOCAL BANKRUPTCY RULES (LBRs) and is
incorporated in the LBRs." Bankr. C.D. Cal. Manual (June 12, 2017),
http://www.cacb.uscourts.gov/court-manual.
2
relevant documents manually at the filing window" "whenever it is essential that a
particular document be filed by a particular date" including when "[t]he
Bankruptcy Code or the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure establish a
specific deadline for the filing of the documents in question that will run prior to
the Resumption of [ECF] Service." Bankr. C.D. Cal. Manual § 3.12(a)(1)(B),
http://www.cacb.uscourts.gov/sites/cacb/files/documents/court-
manual/CtManual_Sec3.pdf. Because Debtor’s appeal was untimely, the district
court lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal. Wiersma v. Bank of W. (In re
Wiersma), 483 F.3d 933, 938 (9th Cir. 2007).
AFFIRMED.
3