Silver Sage Partners, Ltd. v. City of Desert Hot Springs

MEMORANDUM *

Silver Sage Partners, Ltd. (“Silver Sage”) appeals the district court’s affirmance of the bankruptcy court, which denied Silver Sage’s motion for complete relief from the bankruptcy stay and granted partial relief. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 158 (d), and we affirm. Because the facts are familiar to the parties, we will not recite them here.

Silver Sage’s best argument is that the “for cause” exception to the stay set forth in 11 U.S.C. § 362 (d)(1) applies because the City of Desert Hot Springs (“City”) filed for bankruptcy in bad faith and/or failed to meet the prerequisites for filing. Silver Sage loses the argument, however, because it has introduced insufficient evidence of bad faith. That City officials may have misunderstood Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings or have been overly optimistic about their result does not show that they consciously desired to evade the law.

Silver Sage also argues that the City failed to satisfy two of the five prerequisites for filing. 1 Assuming that a motion for relief from stay — as opposed to a motion to dismiss — is a proper vehicle to challenge the City’s bankruptcy filing as a whole and that we can consider this…