Whether the Securities and Exchange Commission can obtain a prejudgment receivership seizing entire companies without demonstrating clear necessity and proportionality in preliminary equitable relief

No question identified. : To the Honorable Samuel A. Alito Jr., as Circuit Justice for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: Petitioner Timothy Barton respectfully requests an unopposed 60day extension of time to file his petition for writ of certiorari. This request, if granted, would extend the deadline from September 15, 2025, to November 14, 2025. The Petitioner is exploring asking this Court to review a judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, issued through a published opinion on April 17, 2025, which affirmed a district court’s order seizing and placing in a prejudgment receivership nearly every company associated with the Petitioner. Secuwrities and Exchange Comm'n v. Barton, 135 F.4th 206 (5th Cir. 2025) (attached as App. A). The Petitioner timely sought rehearing en banc on June 2, 2025. The Court of Appeals denied rehearing en banc on June 16, 2025. See App. B. The Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to review the district court's order appointing a receiver under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a), and the Court’s jurisdiction to review the Court of Appeals judgment rests on 28 U.S.C. § 1254. Counsel for the Petitioner conferred with the Office of Solicitor General representing the Respondent United States Securities and Exchange Commission in this Court, who graciously reported that the United States does not oppose the requested extension. In the underlying case, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint alleging that the petitioner had engaged in violations of the securities laws with respect to several loans relating to certain real estate development projects. On the same day, the United States Department of Justice filed parallel criminal charges against the petitioner. Almost immediately in the civil case, the Securities and Exchange Commission sought and the district court ordered seizure of all the Petitioner's assets and placed them into a receivership. This occurred before any discovery into the Government's allegations, much less a judgment of liability. The Court of Appeals reversed this sweeping receivership order, on grounds that the district court did not find the requisite "clear necessity" for the "drastic remedy" of a prejudgment receivership and did not limit it to the assets that were the "subject matter of the litigation." Securities and Exchange Comm ’n v. Barton, 79 F.4th 573, 578 (5th Cir. 2023). On remand, the district court imposed virtually the same receivership, taking every company related to the petitioner that allegedly had "benefitted" from the loans the Government claims were affected by securities laws violations. In doing so, the district court seized entire companies—some with tens of millions of dollars in unrelated real estate assets—because employees of another Petitioner company assisted in developing those properties and might have had some of their salaries paid with corporate funds allegedly commingled with the loan proceeds at issue. Another panel of the court of appeals upheld this ruling, adopting an infinitely flexible standard for what assets a district court might seize at the beginning of a case. Securities and Exchange Comm'n v. Barton, 135 F.4th 206 (5th Cir. 2025) (attached at App. A). The result of the receiverships has been that the petitioner has been deprived of all resources to fund his defense in complex parallel criminal and civil cases. Undersigned counsel has been working to urge at least partial reversal of the receiverships without compensation since the earliest days of the civil case. Given these challenging financial circumstances created by the receivership orders, the requested extension will assist counsel in evaluating whether the Court of Appeals judgment presents matters meeting this Court's standards for certiorari and, if so, to draft and file the petition. Undersigned counsel is doing so amidst briefing responsibilities in multiple other cases, including this month before