Page:Bartenwerfer v. Buckley.pdf/14

Rh To begin, it characterizes the Bankruptcy Code as focused on the unadulterated pursuit of the debtor’s interest. But the Code, like all statutes, balances multiple, often competing interests. Section 523 is a case in point: Barring certain debts from discharge necessarily reflects aims distinct from wiping the bankrupt’s slate clean. Perhaps Congress concluded that these debts involved particularly deserving creditors, particularly undeserving debtors, or both. Regardless, if a fresh start were all that mattered, §523 would not exist. No statute pursues a single policy at all costs, and we are not free to rewrite this statute (or any other) as if it did. Azar v. Allina Health Services, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 15).

It also bears emphasis—because the thread is easily lost in Bartenwerfer’s argument—that §523(a)(2)(A) does not define the scope of one person’s liability for another’s fraud. That is the function of the underlying law—here, the law of California. Section 523(a)(2)(A) takes the debt as it finds it, so if California did not extend liability to honest partners, §523(a)(2)(A) would have no role to play. Bartenwerfer’s fairness-based critiques seem better directed toward the state law that imposed the obligation on her in the first place.

And while Bartenwerfer paints a picture of liability imposed willy-nilly on hapless bystanders, the law of fraud does not work that way. Ordinarily, a faultless individual is responsible for another’s debt only when the two have a special relationship, and even then, defenses to liability are available. For instance, though an employer is generally accountable for the wrongdoing of an employee, he usually can escape liability if he proves that the employee’s action was committed outside the scope of employment. Restatement (Third) of Agency §7.07 (2006); D. Dobbs, P. Hayden, & E. Bublick, Law of Torts §425 (2022). Similarly, if one partner takes a wrongful act without authority or outside the ordinary course of business, then the partnership—and