Page:Bartenwerfer v. Buckley.pdf/8

Rh 20. Section 523(a)(2)(A) supposedly operates the same way: An ordinary English speaker would understand that “money obtained by fraud” means money obtained by the individual debtor’s fraud. Passive voice hides the relevant actor in plain sight.

We disagree: Passive voice pulls the actor off the stage. At least on its face, Bartenwerfer’s sentence conveys only that someone’s hard work led to Jane’s clerkship—whether that be Jane herself, the professor who wrote a last-minute letter of recommendation, or the counselor who collated the application materials. Section 523(a)(2)(A) is similarly broad. Congress framed it to “focu[s] on an event that occurs without respect to a specific actor, and therefore without respect to any actor’s intent or culpability.” Dean v. United States, 556 U. S. 568, 572 (2009); B. Garner, Modern English Usage 676 (4th ed. 2016) (the passive voice signifies that “the actor is unimportant” or “unknown”). The debt must result from someone’s fraud, but Congress was “agnosti[c]” about who committed it. Watson v. United States, 552 U. S. 74, 81 (2007).

It is true, of course, that context can confine a passive-voice sentence to a likely set of actors. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Train, 430 U. S. 112, 128–129 (1977). If the dean of the law school delivers Bartenwerfer’s hypothetical statement to Jane’s parents, the most natural implication is that Jane’s hard work led to the clerkship. But in the fraud-discharge exception, context does not single out the wrongdoer as the relevant actor. Quite the opposite: The relevant legal context—the common law of fraud—has long maintained that fraud liability is not limited to the wrongdoer. Field v. Mans, 516 U. S. 59, 70–75 (1995) (interpreting §523(a)(2)(A) with reference to the common law of fraud). For instance, courts have traditionally held principals liable for the frauds of their agents. McCord v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 39 Minn. 181, 185, 39 N. W. 315, 317 (1888); Tome v. Parkersburg Branch R. Co., 39 Md. 36,