Cite as: 511 U. S. 531 (1994)
Souter, J., dissenting
ity of the normal tool for determining what property is worth (fair market value), the only legitimate evidence of the property's value at the time it is sold is the foreclosure-sale price itself.
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is
Affirmed.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Blackmun, Justice Stevens, and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.
The Court today holds that by the terms of the Bankruptcy Code Congress intended a peppercorn paid at a noncollusive and procedurally regular foreclosure sale to be treated as the "reasonabl[e] equivalent" of the value of a California beachfront estate. Because the Court's reasoning fails both to overcome the implausibility of that proposition and to justify engrafting a foreclosure-sale exception onto 11 U. S. C. § 548(a)(2)(A), in derogation of the straightforward language used by Congress, I respectfully dissent.
I
A
The majority presents our task of giving meaning to § 548(a)(2)(A) in this case as essentially entailing a choice between two provisions that Congress might have enacted, but did not. One would allow a bankruptcy trustee to avoid a recent foreclosure-sale transfer from an insolvent debtor whenever anything less than fair market value was obtained, while the second would limit the avoidance power to cases where the foreclosure sale was collusive or had failed to comply with state-prescribed procedures. The Court then argues that, given the unexceptionable proposition that forced sales rarely yield as high a price as sales held under ideal, "market" conditions, Congress's "omission" from
549
Page: Index Previous 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007