406
O'Connor, J., dissenting
today properly rejects that rationale. Ante, at 396-397. The second reason offered by the Court of Appeals was that the notice containing the deadline was incorporated in a document entitled "Notice for Meeting of Creditors." That designation, the court explained, was not enough to put those without extensive bankruptcy experience on notice that the "bar date" at the end of the notice was the final date for filing proofs of claims. In re Pioneer Investment Services Co., 943 F. 2d 673, 678 (CA6 1991). In addition, the court noted that use of the term "bar date" to designate the deadline for filing a proof of claim was "dramatic[ally] ambigu-[ous]" since there are many bar dates in bankruptcy, not all of them for the filing of proofs of claims. Ibid. The Court today signals its agreement. Ante, at 398, and n. 15. The majority and the Court of Appeals may be correct that the form of notice was unorthodox; they also may be correct in asserting that, if the inadequacy of notice caused respondents to miss the deadline, respondents' failure was the result of "excusable neglect." But they are not correct in asserting that respondents' former lawyer overlooked the deadline "as a result of" the unorthodox form of notice. The Bankruptcy Court made no such finding. Nor did it find that the notice's ambiguity somehow led counsel astray. On the contrary, the Bankruptcy Court found that both counsel and client had actual notice of the deadline and that the cause of their failure to file on time was indifference and negligence. App. 172a.
To be sure, we would not be obligated to accept those findings if they were not supported by the record. But they are supported by the record. Indeed, in a commendable display of candor, respondents' former counsel admitted that the "foul-up" was "particularly" his own. Id., at 72a. Accord, id., at 112a ("[T]he foul-up I can't lay to the clients' shoes because it really is probably mine"). There is no indication that he blamed his error on petitioner's form of notice. Rather, he appealed to the Bankruptcy Court's sense of fair-
Page: Index Previous 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007