Hale v. Brinker International, Inc.
- Vince Chhabria
- 3:21-cv-09978
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Hale v. Brinker International, Judge Chhabria denied dismissal, finding Gomez’s omission of claims from bankruptcy schedules plausibly inadvertent and postponing the standing decision.
Gomez and the other plaintiffs, the defendants, and potentially the bankruptcy trustee, whose treatment of the claims may affect who can pursue them.
What happened
In Hale v. Brinker International, the defendants asked the court to dismiss claims after Gomez failed to list them in his initial bankruptcy petition. The court considered evidence that Gomez did not understand the claims were bankruptcy assets, that his lawyer had not explained the need to reopen the petition, and that Gomez had disclosed the bankruptcy during his deposition.
The court concluded that the omission could plausibly have resulted from inadvertence or mistake. Gomez had also sought to reopen the bankruptcy petition. The court said it could not yet decide whether Gomez had standing to pursue the claims because the effect of reopening the petition could change who was legally entitled to assert them.
The court denied the motion to dismiss. Judge Chhabria ordered Gomez to file a status report about the bankruptcy proceedings within 21 days and said the case might be referred to the bankruptcy court to determine whether the trustee would pursue or give up the claims.
The detailed version
- Hale v. Brinker International, Inc. · No. 3:21-cv-09978
- Vince Chhabria
- June 25, 2025
Background
The defendants moved to dismiss claims in this case after Gomez failed to include them in his initial bankruptcy petition. Gomez told the defendants during his deposition that he had filed for bankruptcy. He submitted a declaration stating that English is his second language and that he did not understand that a pending claim with no fixed value had to be listed as an asset. Gomez’s counsel also stated that the duty to reopen the bankruptcy petition had not been explained to him. Gomez had since sought to reopen the petition to add the claims.
The defendants argued that the omission had previously been raised in connection with the motion for class certification and that Gomez had not moved to reopen the petition at that time. The court concluded that this circumstance did not make it implausible that the omission resulted from inadvertence or mistake.
Ruling
The court denied the motion to dismiss. It held that the evidence could support a finding that Gomez’s failure to list the claims was inadvertent or a mistake, including because Gomez had not attempted to conceal the bankruptcy and had sought to reopen the petition.
The court did not decide standing. It explained that if the bankruptcy petition were reopened, Gomez would no longer have prudential standing, but he could seek to amend the case to add the trustee as the real party in interest. Depending on how the trustee treated the claims, Gomez might later become the real party in interest again.
Next Step Ordered by the Court
Gomez was ordered to provide a status report on the bankruptcy proceedings 21 days after the order. Depending on those proceedings, the court may refer the matter to the bankruptcy court to determine whether the trustee wishes to abandon or assert the claims on behalf of the bankruptcy estate.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.