In brief - Your actions will depend on whether you acknowledge or dispute the debt
If you are contacted by a debt collector, you should be frank about what you plan to do. If you dispute the debt, you should get legal advice as quickly as possible.
Debt collectors don't go away if you ignore them
Case law on the new insolvent transactions regime is scarce, even though the changes were introduced three years ago. The High Court's recent decision in Blanchett v McEntee Hire Holdings Limited examines, for the first time in New Zealand, central principles in the new voidable transactions regime.
Cow Harbour Construction Ltd1
introduction
The 2009 amendments to the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (Canada) (the “CCAA”) and the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada) codified with some modifications judge made law giving a court authority to grant super-priority priming liens to secure interim financing (or debtorin- possession financing).
The Law Reform Commission (LRC) launched its Report on Personal Debt Management and Debt Enforcement, on 16 December 2010, at its Annual Conference. The Report makes 200 recommendations for reform, and also contains a draft Personal Insolvency Bill. Reform of personal debt law must be introduced next year to comply with the Government's agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
In a 5-3 decision written by Justice Stephen G.
In a 5-3 decision handed down on May 15, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) is not violated when a debt collector files a proof of claim for a debt subject to the bar of an expired limitations period. The decision:
In Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a debt collector does not run afoul of the FDCPA by filing a proof of claim in bankruptcy on a stale debt.
In Dubois v. Atlas Acquisitions LLC, Case No. 15-1945 (4th Cir. Aug. 25, 2016), the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2-1 decision that filing proofs of claim on time-barred debts does not violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”), at least where state law preserves the right to collect on the payment. In so holding, the court sided with the Second and Eighth Circuit Courts of Appeals in a circuit split regarding the viability of FDCPA claims premised on proofs of claim filed in a debtor’s bankruptcy case.
Upon receiving notice of a debtor’s bankruptcy case, the prudent debt collector typically files a proof of claim, in the hope of receiving some distribution from the debtor’s bankruptcy estate. Absent a fraudulent claim by the debt collector, the Bankruptcy Code specifically provides for the filing of claims against the debtor’s estate. So how could a debt collector be sued for doing what the Code allows? It could happen if debts a collector actually holds are barred from enforcement under a state statute of limitations.
In 2014 the Eleventh Circuit held that a debt collector violates the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act when it filed a proof of claim in a chapter 13 case on a debt that it knows to be time-barred. Crawford v. LVNV Funding, LLC, 758 F.3d 1254 (11th Circ. 2014).