UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ROGAN (May 12, 2011)
The well known travails of Fred Wilpon, the principal owner of the New York Mets, have all converged this past week. He, his partner Saul Katz and their families and affiliated enterprises (the “Wilpon/Katz Group”) lost several hundred million dollars when Bernard Madoff’s long running Ponzi scheme finally unraveled at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.
COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION v. LAKE SHORE ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD. (May 11, 2011)
Recently, some bankruptcy courts in Ohio have given mortgage lenders something new to be concerned over: Is the form of your notary’s certification proper? Everyone in the mortgage industry is aware of the wave of cases challenging the validity or effectiveness of certain mortgages or mortgage assignments on account of sub-standard execution, notarization and recordation practices.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has taken under advisement the latest case involving the now contentious issue of credit bidding.
The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Kentucky recently found that a vendor’s filing of a prepetition notice of lis pendens served to place any hypothetical judicial lien creditor, execution creditor, or purchaser of real property on notice of its equitable lien against the property for the unpaid portion of the purchase price. This prepetition notice of lis pendens prevented the debtors-in-possession from avoiding the vendor’s lien in exercise of their strong-arm powers under 11 U.S.C. § 544.
STAMAT v. NEARY (March 24, 2011)
In Hardesty v. CitiFinancial, Inc.,1 the Sixth Circuit affirmed the bankruptcy court’s denial of the trustee’s request to avoid the debtors’ mortgages with the creditor based on allegedly defective certificates of acknowledgement in the mortgage documents under Ohio law.
The Indiana Lawyer Announced on March 31, 2011, that the Fair Finance Co.’s bankruptcy trustee had reached a $371,000 settlement with an Indianapolis attorney who was accused of defaulting on a 2003 loan from the business. The trustee had sued the Indiana attorney and his wife, saying that the couple failed to pay off a $250,000 loan that matured in 2006. Accrued interest had raised the amount owed to over $370,000.