Christopher R. Barclay
Christopher R. Barclay is a California attorney who served as a court-appointed Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee. He was formerly associated with Finlayson Toffer Roosevelt and Lilly LLP, a California law firm that has since dissolved; its domain now redirects to Afternic. Barclay is named as a respondent in adversary proceeding Case 26-90003-CL, filed January 6, 2026, in the Southern District of California. The proceeding alleges that as trustee over the TopDevz LLC bankruptcy estate, he settled claims valued at $75 million for $200,000 and then sold the remaining estate litigation rights to the individual identified as the principal target of those same claims.
Career as Bankruptcy Trustee
Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustees are appointed by the United States Trustee Program, a component of the Department of Justice, to administer the estates of debtors whose cases are filed under or converted to Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. Trustees are fiduciaries. They owe duties to the estate and to creditors, not to the debtor or to third parties. Their job is to liquidate assets and distribute proceeds to creditors in the order the Bankruptcy Code prescribes.
Trustee appointments are typically made from a panel maintained in each federal district. The trustees on that panel are usually attorneys or accountants with experience in insolvency matters. Barclay's appointment in the TopDevz case was consistent with that process: the case converted from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, and the court appointed a panel trustee to take over administration.
His former firm, Finlayson Toffer Roosevelt and Lilly LLP, was a California-based business law firm. The firm no longer operates. Its web domain redirects to Afternic, a domain aftermarket platform, indicating the firm wound down without a successor entity taking over its online presence.
TopDevz Bankruptcy
TopDevz LLC filed for bankruptcy protection in 2024. The case is numbered 24-00617 in the Southern District of California. It began as a Chapter 11 reorganization. D. Edward Hays, a Beverly Hills bankruptcy attorney at Marshack Hays LLP, filed motions to convert the case to Chapter 7. The conversion was granted.
Barclay was appointed as Chapter 7 trustee on May 9, 2024.
TopDevz had been a software development company headquartered at 7460 Girard Avenue in La Jolla, California. By the time of its bankruptcy, it had served clients including HBO, DriveTime Automotive Group, Procore Technologies, and Becton Dickinson, and had generated roughly $30 million in cumulative revenue. The company was co-founded in 2017 by Ashkan Rajaee, who held a 51% interest and was the Manager under the operating agreement, and Tyler Brandon Davis, who held a 49% minority interest.
The debtor, Rajaee (and his company Mobile Monster), alleged that the estate held litigation claims worth $75 million against Davis and others, stemming from an alleged multi-year scheme involving wire fraud, trade secret theft, bankruptcy fraud, and related conduct. Those claims are described in detail in companion civil RICO action Case 3:26-cv-00080-GPC-BJW.
Malpractice Allegations
The adversary proceeding names Barclay and Jesse Finlayson as respondents. The core theory is that Barclay failed his fiduciary duty to the estate and its creditors in two discrete steps, each of which benefited the wrong party.
First, Barclay settled all estate claims, including the $75 million in litigation claims described above, for a combined payment of $200,000. The debtor vigorously opposed the settlement. The objection was overruled and the settlement was approved.
Second, Barclay filed a motion to sell the remaining estate litigation rights and the estate's interest in TopDevz to Tyler Brandon Davis personally for $100,000. Davis is the individual identified throughout the companion litigation as the principal organizer and leader of the alleged criminal enterprise the estate claims were supposed to address.
The debtor opposed that sale as well. The opposition was overruled. The sale closed. The practical result: Davis acquired the very claims that had been intended to hold him accountable.
The adversary proceeding challenges both transactions. It does not allege simple negligence or poor judgment. It alleges conduct that crossed into bad faith and breach of fiduciary duty, coordinated with Hays and others named in the companion RICO action.
The $75 Million Settlement
The $200,000 figure and the $75 million figure come from different sources. The $75 million is the debtor's valuation of the litigation claims in the estate, drawn from the allegations in Case 3:26-cv-00080-GPC-BJW. The $200,000 is the amount actually received by the estate through the settlement Barclay negotiated and approved.
The ratio, settling $75 million in claims for $200,000, or roughly $0.27 on the dollar for every thousand dollars claimed, is the factual predicate for the malpractice and breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims in the adversary proceeding.
Trustees have discretion in how they administer estates. Courts generally give trustees some deference on business judgments, including settlement decisions. The question the adversary proceeding raises is whether this settlement fell outside the range of reasonable business judgment or whether it reflected something worse.
Barclay has not made public statements about the allegations as of April 2026. He is presumed innocent and is entitled to defend himself in the adversary proceeding. The case is in early stages and no trial date has been set.