UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ DIGITAL MEDIA SOLUTIONS, LLC, │ Plaintiff, │ │ EMMANUEL DUNAGAN; JESSICA MUSCARI; ROBERT J. │ > No. 21-4014 INFUSINO; STEPHANIE PORRECA, │ Intervenor Plaintiffs-Appellants, │ │ v. │ │ │ SOUTH UNIVERSITY OF OHIO, LLC, et al., │ Defendants, │ │ MARK E. DOTTORE, │ │ Receiver-Appellee. │ ┘

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Cleveland. No. 1:19-cv-00145—Dan A. Polster, District Judge.

Argued: July 19, 2022

Decided and Filed: February 7, 2023

Before: GIBBONS, ROGERS, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. _________________

COUNSEL ARGUED: Matthew W.H. Wessler, GUPTA WESSLER PLLC, Washington, D.C., for Appellants. Robert T. Glickman, MCCARTHY, LEBIT, CRYSTAL & LIFFMAN CO., LPA, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Matthew W.H. Wessler, GUPTA WESSLER PLLC, Washington, D.C., Eric Rothschild, NATIONAL STUDENT LEGAL DEFENSE NETWORK, Washington, D.C., for Appellants. Robert T. Glickman, Hugh Berkson, MCCARTHY, LEBIT, CRYSTAL & LIFFMAN CO., LPA, Cleveland, Ohio, Mary K. Whitmer, James W. Ehrman, WHITMER & EHRMAN LLC, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. David A. Castleman, RAINES FELDMAN LLP, New York, New York, for Amicus Curiae. No. 21-4014 Digital Media Solutions, LLC, et al. Page 2 v. S. Univ. of Ohio, LLC, et al.

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OPINION _________________

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Before the modern bankruptcy laws, federal courts had long reorganized distressed corporate debtors using an equitable remedy: the appointment of a receiver in an “equity receivership” to gather and safeguard the debtor’s assets for a fair division among its creditors. These receiverships, although rare, continue to exist today. Receivers must administer the debtor’s property in accordance with the “historical practice” of courts of equity. Fed. R. Civ. P. 66. In this case, the receiver and several non-receivership parties entered into a settlement that was contingent on the district court’s issuance of a “bar order” that would permanently bar non-settling third parties from pursuing personal-liability claims against non- debtors who were not in the receivership. The district court approved this settlement and entered the requested bar order. This case therefore raises the question of whether historical principles of equity allowed the court to issue an injunction that protected the non-receivership assets of non- receivership parties. Because that type of non-debtor relief amounts to a remedy “previously unknown to equity jurisprudence,” the district court lacked the authority to issue the bar order. Grupo Mexicano de Des