On October 17, 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court held that under the Delaware Uniform Commercial Code, the subjective intent of a secured party is irrelevant in determining the effectiveness of a UCC-3 termination statement if the secured party authorized its filing.[1]
Background
Most lawyers are generally familiar with the concept of a floating lien under the Uniform Commercial Code. A secured creditor takes a lien in a collateral category that changes from time to time as items are added or subtracted. A common example is a working capital loan, in which financed inventory is produced and sold, then becoming an account, which is collected to provide the funds to produce new inventory. A secured creditor may perfect a lien in the changing mass of inventory and receivables, as each category exists from time to time.
For the past 15 years, trust preferred securities (TruPS) have constituted a significant percentage of the capital of many financial institutions, mostly bank holding companies.Their ubiquity, both as a source of capital and as a common investment for banks, made them a quiet constant for many financial institutions. Even in the chaos of the Great Recession, standard TruPS terms allowed for the deferral of interest payments for up to five years, easing institutions’ cash-flow burdens during those volatile times.
Note: This post is the first in a continuing series on the Credit Report Blog on the subject of workouts and bankruptcies involving low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) projects.
On October 17, 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court entered an opinion holding that a UCC-3 termination statement that is authorized by the secured party is effective to terminate the original UCC filing even though the secured party did not actually intend to extinguish the underlying security interest.1 Because the court determined that the relevant section of Delaware’s Uniform Commercial Code (the “UCC”) is unambiguous and
U.S. Bank, N.A. v. Brumfiel (In re Brumfiel), 514 B.R. 637 (Bankr. D. Colo. 2014) –
After a debtor reopened her chapter 7 bankruptcy case, a lender moved for relief from the automatic stay in order to continue with a foreclosure action. The debtor objected, arguing among other things that the lender did not have standing to request relief.
In a split decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in its opinion in Sunshine Heifers, LLC v. Citizens First Bank (In Re: Lee H. Purdy), 763 F.3d 513 (6th Cir. 2014) held a long term lease of livestock extending beyond the economic life of the individual leased livestock can still be a true lease and not a disguised security interest.
On October 16, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit entered an order requiring a real estate lender, First National Bank (the “Lender”), to refund certain mortgage payments it received from Protective Health Management (the “Debtor”), an affiliate of its borrower.1 Because the mortgage payments constituted actual fraudulent transfers, the Fifth Circuit held that the Lender could retain the payments only to the extent of the value of the Debtor’s continued use of the property.2&
Skyrocketing college tuition costs are leaving consumers with greater student-loan debt, while bankruptcy code gives little protection to those struggling under it. Billionaire investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban says “rising student loan debt is crushing the U.S. economy, preventing recent graduates from buying the things that normally stimulate the economy,” according to a recent Consumer Affairs article.