In an agricultural lien contest between three creditors of a bankrupt commercial farm, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently affirmed the trial court’s award of summary judgment in favor of a bank that provided debtor-in-possession financing, holding that the locale of the farm products determined the applicable lien law and that bank’s lien was superior to the liens of two nurseries that supplied trees and shrubs because the latter were either unperfected or unenforceable.
The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently affirmed a lower bankruptcy court’s ruling that a refinanced mortgage was enforceable as to the interests of both husband and wife, where the wife did not execute the note and was not defined as a “borrower” in the body of the mortgage, but nonetheless initialed and signed the mortgage document as a “borrower” in the signature block.
The Supreme Court of Missouri recently held that a trial court abused its discretion by certifying an overly broad class with a class representative whose claims against the debt collector defendant were not typical of the class.
The Bottom Line
The Bottom Line
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York entered a decision confirming the applicability of the Court’s bar date order as it relates to a pension fund’s claim for withdrawal liability filed after the bar date, despite the fact that the withdrawal occurred after the deadline for filing proofs of claim.
What Happened?
The Bottom Line
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that a recent change to Ohio law involving notice of a defective lien had no bearing on a bankruptcy trustee’s ability to avoid the defective lien because such notice is irrelevant to a trustee’s status as a judicial lien creditor.
Accordingly, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel’s upholding of the bankruptcy court’s denial of the mortgagee’s motion for judgment on the pleadings.
The Bottom Line
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that a mortgagee’s failure to take a deficiency judgment against a borrower who filed bankruptcy in a concluded state foreclosure action precluded the mortgagee from making a deficiency claim in the borrower’s bankruptcy proceeding.
A copy of the opinion in BMO Harris Bank N.A. v. Anderson is available at: Link to Opinion.