The Ninth Circuit has overruled its own relatively recent decision and held that a debtor who sues for damages to redress a violation of the automatic stay may recover the reasonable fees it incurs in prosecuting the action, even after the stay violation is cured.

A recent and emerging trend in Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases is lawsuits brought by Chapter 7 trustees to recover from colleges and universities pre-petition tuition payments made by Chapter 7 debtors for their adult children’s post-secondary education. While many of these cases have settled, thus not resulting in reported decisions, there are four written decisions to date on this subject.¹ This article discusses the legal theory behind these avoidance actions and explores the universe of case law.

A debtor that files a bankruptcy proceeding is automatically protected from collection actions by the bankruptcy “stay,” which stops all creditor actions to collect pre-petition debts. However, excluded from the stay is the “commencement or continuation of a criminal action or proceeding against the debtor.” This is called the “criminal prosecution exception” to the automatic stay. For example, the automatic stay does not stop a criminal prosecution for theft or passing bad checks.

We all learned the first day of our Bankruptcy 101 class in law school that just because a debtor files for bankruptcy doesn’t mean those entities who have guaranteed the debtor’s obligations are off the hook.  Doesn’t ring a bell?  Well if you were sleeping during this part of the lecture, allow us to elaborate.  Unless a guarantor has itself filed for bankruptcy, it will not be afforded protections under the Bankruptcy Code and creditors will not be stopped from looking to the guarantor for payment if the debtor fails to fulfill its obligation.  But what if the debtor&

Under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a secured party can perfect its lien on certain of a debtor's assets by the filing of a UCC-1 financing statement. However, Section 9-509 of the UCC provides that a party may file such a financing statement only if the debtor authorizes the filing: either expressly in an authenticated record or, more commonly, by executing a security agreement. The UCC does not specify when a debtor must provide such authorization, but the U.S.

For those readers who have a sophisticated understanding of bankruptcy law, the holdings of Jester v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (In re Jester) will not be surprising.

Under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code, a debtor is permitted to sell substantially all of its assets outside of a plan of reorganization. Over the past two decades, courts have increasingly liberalized the standards under which 363 sales are approved. A recent decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit,

When defending against an employee's claims, an initial step that every employer should take is to determine if the employee has filed a Chapter 7 Voluntary Petition for bankruptcy in the recent past. If an employee filed for bankruptcy and failed to identify his EEOC charge or potential claims against his employer as an asset of his bankruptcy estate, the employee might be barred from pursuing the claim against the employer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a case of first impression, recently held that section 1328(f) of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), which bars so-called “Chapter 20” debtors from receiving a discharge at the conclusion of their Chapter 13 reorganization if they received a Chapter 7 discharge within four years of filing the petition for Chapter 13 relief, does not prevent a debtor from voiding a secured creditor’s lien under section 506(d) of the Bankruptcy Code.

A terminated officer of a corporate debtor, who bargained for “18 months of severance ( … $375,000 … ) to ensure that his firing not disrupt [the debtor’s] negotiations for $80 million” of financing gave the debtor “reasonably equivalent value,” held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on Oct. 15, 2015. In re Adam Aircraft Industries, Inc., 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 17930, at *27 (10th Cir. Oct. 15, 2015).