Cachet Fin. Servs. v. C&J Assocs., Inc.
Cachet Fin. Servs. v. C&J Assocs., Inc.
Opinion of the Court
I. INTRODUCTION
This is a statutory interpleader action initiated by Cachet Financial Services ("Cachet") against eighty-two defendants to resolve conflicting claims to $ 1,886,546.73 (the "Interpleaded Funds"), which Cachet deposited with this Court. Cachet moves for summary judgment or in the alternative partial summary judgment. At issue in the motion is whether Cachet is entitled to recoup $ 835,748.83 of the Interpleaded Funds. Defendants and Counterclaimants Pacific Diversified Insurance Services, Inc. ("Pacific") and Robert Talbott, Inc. ("Talbott") (collectively "Defendants") oppose the motion. The following parties join in Defendants' opposition to the motion: Defendant and Counterclaimant Pinnacle Manufacturing Corporation (Dkt. No. 205); Intervenor Gavin De Becker & Associates LP (Dkt. No. 206); and Defendant San Juan Oaks, LLC (Dkt. No. 207). The Court finds it appropriate to take the motion under submission for decision without oral argument pursuant to Civil Local Rule 7-1(b). Based upon all pleadings filed to date, Cachet's motion will be denied.
II. BACKGROUND
Cachet is an electronic Automated Clearing House ("ACH") third party service provider that processes a variety of electronic funds transfers ("EFT") in the form of payroll ACH transfers.
In March of 2007, Cachet and Pinnacle entered into a "Remarketer Agreement" pursuant to which Cachet provided ACH transaction services for Pinnacle. Succar Decl. Ex 1, Dkt. No. 194-1. Pinnacle provided instructions directing Cachet to debit funds from the accounts of Pinnacle's clients, the employers; to aggregate their funds within a general clearing account maintained for Pinnacle by Cachet ("clearing account"); and to credit specific accounts for the purpose of making ACH payroll payments to the employees of Pinnacle's employer clients. Id. at CFS00018. The "Pricing, Billing and Funding" section of the Remarketer Agreement provided in pertinent part as follows:
CACHET shall deposit funds in [Pinnacle] account(s) for Client trust funds, [Pinnacle] fees, and other settlements authorized by Client to be made to [Pinnacle] within forty-eight (48) hours following receipt of collected funds from Client.... [Pinnacle] understands and acknowledges that Cachet is not a bank but that Cachet has requested and received regulatory permission to process EFT transactions through the FRB. [Pinnacle] additionally understands that the FRB requires banks and financial institutions to maintain a ten (10) percent reserve with the FRB to guarantee the EFT transactions processed. [Pinnacle] agrees to make these required funds available and to maintain the required reserve at Cachet for the sole purpose of meeting the required FRB reserve.
Id. The "Liability" section of the Remarketer Agreement included the following provision: "[Pinnacle] shall fund any NSF return or other returned item until the item in question has been fully resolved." Id. at CFS00019.
On September 27, 2016, Pinnacle's clearing account with Cachet was overdrawn in the amount of $ 1,395,748.83. Cachet's Separate Stmt. of Undisputed Material Facts ("SSUF") No. 7. Cachet immediately contacted Pinnacle to advise it that its account had been suspended pending complete funding of its existing account overdraft. Succar Decl. ¶ 8. Pinnacle promised to resolve the overdraft by providing a prompt wire transfer payment. Id. Cachet advised Pinnacle that two conditions had to be met for Cachet to reinstate service: (1) Pinnacle must resolve the overdraft by providing the wire transfer; and (2) "the ACH collection for the direct deposits be settled within Cachet's clearing account for Pinnacle." Id. ¶ 9. Cachet further advised that "[o]nce Pinnacle satisfied its account overdraft, Cachet would then release the collected funds for the direct deposit payments from the clearing account."Id. Pinnacle agreed to these terms without notifying any of its employer clients and Cachet processed Pinnacle's collection instructions onto the ACH Network. Id. ¶ 10. Pinnacle, however, did not meet its obligation to resolve the overdraft; Pinnacle wired $ 560,000 instead of the full $ 1,395,748.83 and the account remained overdrawn by $ 835,748.83. Id.
Cachet immediately contacted Pinnacle regarding the overdraft. Id. Pinnacle's staff told Cachet that it did not have access to funds and that the only person who did, Mr. McEwan, was incapacitated due to *1306a medical emergency.
On September 28, 2016, Cachet had a net sum of $ 2,608,226.41 in the clearing account after processing Pinnacle's collection instructions. Id. ¶ 11. Pinnacle's instructions directed the transfer of $ 459,127.04 into Pinnacle's tax clearing account for the benefit of Christopher Ranch LLC, which left $ 2,149,099.37 in the clearing account. Id. Cachet did not receive any further wire transfers from Pinnacle and accordingly re-suspended Pinnacle's account. Id. ¶ 12.
On or before October 18, 2016, a number of banks acting on behalf of Pinnacle's clients executed ACH returns totaling $ 262,552.64, which left a balance of $ 1,886,546.73 in the clearing account. Id. ¶ 14.
Cachet set off Pinnacle's clearing account to recover the $ 835,748.83 (the overdrawn balance that had existed on September 27, 2016), filed the instant interpleader action in November of 2016 (Dkt. No. 1), and deposited the remaining funds from the clearing account with the court (Dkt. No. 138). Cachet characterizes the setoff as a "routine internal accounting balance." Cachet's Mot. for Summary Judg. 15, Dkt. No. 194. Later Cachet filed a motion for discharge, which the court denied. Dkt. No. 179. The court also ordered Cachet to deposit the $ 835,748.83 that Cachet had kept (id. ) and Cachet complied (Dkt. No. 181).
Three Defendants, Pacific, Talbott and Pinnacle Manufacturing Corp. have filed counterclaims against Cachet seeking to recover the amounts Cachet debited from their respective accounts. Dkt. Nos. 140, 149, 150. These three Defendants allege that at the time Cachet debited their accounts Cachet had no intention of crediting their employees' accounts with Defendants' funds. Litigation of the counterclaims is stayed pending completion of the Special Master's claim determination process and submission of the Special Master's final report on distribution of the Interpleaded Funds. Dkt. No. 147.
III. STANDARDS
A motion for summary judgment should be granted if "there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a) ; Addisu v. Fred Meyer, Inc. ,
If the moving party meets the initial burden, the burden then shifts to the non-moving party to go beyond the pleadings and designate specific materials in the record to show that there is a genuinely disputed fact. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c) ; Celotex Corp. ,
"If the nonmoving party fails to produce enough evidence to create a genuine issue of material fact, the moving party wins the motion for summary judgment." Nissan Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Fritz Cos., Inc. ,
IV. DISCUSSION
A. Cachet's Claim
Cachet contends that it is entitled to recover $ 835,748.83 of the Interpleaded Funds as a setoff for Pinnacle's overdraft balance either on a priority or a pro-rata basis. Cachet reasons that California law upholds the practice of a depository institution recouping overdraft balances resulting from NSF transactions. In support of this position, Cachet cites to Miller v. Bank of America , ("Miller I "),
Unlike the Bank in Miller I , Cachet is not a bank but an electronic ACH seeking a setoff for an overdraft balance. The "Remarketer Agreement" expressly states that Cachet "is not a bank but that Cachet has requested and received regulatory permission to process EFT transactions through the FRB."Id. at CFS00018. Section 864 applies to banks, not to ACHs. Moreover, section 864 was repealed in 2011. Cachet has cited no authority and has not put forth a compelling reason why *1308an ACH, especially an ACH like Cachet who contractually agreed to process EFTs for Pinnacle's clients' payroll, should be able to exercise the right to set off in a manner similar to a bank. Therefore, the court finds that Miller I does not provide legal authority for Cachet to set off in this case. The Miller II and DeBartolo cases similarly raise challenges to a bank's practice of balancing customers' accounts by applying account credits against account debits. Miller II ,
The only case cited by Cachet that bears any similarity to the present case is Lonely Maiden Productions, LLC v. GoldenTree Asset Management, LP ,
The Lonely Maiden case is clearly distinguishable from the present case in one critical respect. The lender in Lonely Maiden had a perfected security interest in Axium's general deposit accounts. Here, there is no evidence that Cachet has a perfected security interest in the $ 835,748.83 in the clearing account. To the contrary, Cachet has admitted that it did not have a security interest at all in the funds that it withdrew from Defendants' bank accounts in September of 2016. Cachet's Resp. to Talbott's First Req. for Admis. No. 12 (Dkt. No. 204-4); Cachet's Resp. to Pacific's First Req. for Admis. No. 13 (Dkt. No. 204-4).
Although somewhat unclear, Cachet's next argument appears to assert that because there was an overdraft, Cachet was a creditor and became a "secured" creditor by operation of California Commercial Code section 9312(b)(3). Cachet's Rep. 1, 4. Section 9312(b)(3) provides that "[a] security interest in money may be perfected only by the secured party's taking possession under Section 9313."
Cachet next contends that Lonely Maiden supports its right of setoff, at least in principle, because the court stated:
"It is a firmly established principle that if a recipient of funds is not prohibited from using them as his own and commingling them with his own monies, a debtor-creditor, not a trust, relationship exists". In the absence of a trust, Axium and the film clients had no more than a debtor-creditor relationship.
Lonely Maiden ,
B. Defendants' Counterclaims
Cachet contends that all of the counterclaims are moot and should be dismissed. Cachet's Mot. 19, Dkt. No. 200. Cachet also contends that the counterclaimants lack standing.
V. CONCLUSION
For the reasons set forth above, Cachet has failed to establish it is entitled to a setoff on a priority or pro rata basis. Accordingly, Cachet's motion for summary judgment is DENIED.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
The Background is a brief summary of the undisputed facts that are relevant to this motion.
Cachet requests judicial notice of an article entitled, "How the ACH Network and ACH Payments Work" and a portion of the 2014 National Automated Clearing House Association ("NACHA") Operating Rules & Guidelines, Incomplete Transactions and the Return of Funding Debt Entries, both of which are available on the NACHA website. Dkt. No. 199. Cachet's request is granted. See e.g. Rearden LLC v. Rearden Commerce ,
Cachet requests that the court take judicial notice of the fact that Mr. McEwan pled guilty to wire fraud in connection with the events at issue here. Dkt. No. 208. The request is granted pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 201.
Cachet argues in a footnote in its reply brief that its motion for summary judgment should be granted in its favor against (1) the parties who joined in the motion because this type of joinder is not explicitly authorized in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and (2) any party who failed to file an opposition to the motion. The argument is without merit. The failure to file an opposition to a summary judgment motion "does not excuse the moving party's affirmative duty under Rule 56 to demonstrate its entitlement to judgment as a matter of law." Martinez v. Stanford ,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- CACHET FINANCIAL SERVICES v. C & J ASSOCIATES, INC.
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published