In a lively Supreme Court argument on Tuesday that included references to cookies, cocktails and toxic mushrooms, the justices tried to find the line between misleading statements and outright lies in the case of a Chicago politician convicted of making false statements to bank regulators.
The case concerned Patrick Daley Thompson, a former Chicago alderman who is the grandson of one former mayor, Richard J. Daley, and the nephew of another, Richard M. Daley. He conceded that he had misled the regulators but said his statements fell short of the outright falsehoods he said were required to make them criminal.
The justices peppered the lawyers with colorful questions that tried to tease out the difference between false and misleading statements.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked whether a motorist pulled over on suspicion of driving while impaired said something false by stating that he had had one cocktail while omitting that he had also drunk four glasses of wine.
Caroline A. Flynn, a lawyer for the federal government, said that a jury could find the statement to be false because “the officer was asking for a complete account of how much the person had had to drink.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked about a child who admitted to eating three cookies when she had consumed 10.
Ms. Flynn said context mattered.
“If the mom had said, ‘Did you eat all the cookies,’ or ‘how many cookies did you eat,’ and the child says, ‘I ate three cookies’ when she ate 10, that’s a false statement,” Ms. Flynn said. “But, if the mom says, ‘Did you eat any cookies,’ and the child says three, that’s not an understatement in response to a specific numerical inquiry.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked whether it was false to label toxic mushrooms as “a hundred percent natural.” Ms. Flynn did not give a direct response.
The case before the court, Thompson v. United States, No. 23-1095, started when Mr. Thompson took out three loans from Washington Federal Bank for Savings between 2011 and 2014. He used the first, for $110,000, to finance a law firm. He used the next loan, for $20,000, to pay a tax bill. He used the third, for $89,000, to repay a debt to another bank.
He made a single payment on the loans, for $390 in 2012. The bank, which did not press him for further payments, went under in 2017.
When the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and a loan servicer it had hired sought repayment of the loans plus interest, amounting to about $270,000, Mr. Thompson told them he had borrowed $110,000, which was true in a narrow sense but incomplete.
After negotiations, Mr. Thompson in 2018 paid back the principal but not the interest. More than two years later, federal prosecutors charged him with violating a law making it a crime to give “any false statement or report” to influence the F.D.I.C.
He was convicted and ordered to repay the interest, amounting to about $50,000. He served four months in prison.
Chris C. Gair, a lawyer for Mr. Thompson, said his client’s statements were accurate in context, an assertion that met with skepticism. Justice Elena Kagan noted that the jury had found the statements were false and that a ruling in Mr. Thompson’s favor would require a court to rule that no reasonable juror could have come to that conclusion.
Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said that issue was not before the court, which had agreed to decide the legal question of whether the federal law, as a general matter, covered misleading statements. Lower courts, they said, could decide whether Mr. Thompson had been properly convicted.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked for an example of a misleading statement that was not false. Mr. Gair, who was presenting his first Supreme Court argument, responded by talking about himself.
“If I go back and change my website and say ‘40 years of litigation experience’ and then in bold caps say ‘Supreme Court advocate,’” he said, “that would be, after today, a true statement. It would be misleading to anybody who was thinking about whether to hire me.”
Justice Alito said such a statement was, at most, mildly misleading. But Justice Kagan was impressed.
“Well, it is, though, the humblest answer I’ve ever heard from the Supreme Court podium,” she said, to laugher. “So good show on that one.”
