In Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC, 139 S. Ct. 652, 2019 WL 2166392 (U.S. May 20, 2019), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the rejection in bankruptcy of a trademark license agreement, which constitutes a breach of the agreement under section 365(g) of the Bankruptcy Code, does not terminate the rights of the licensee that would survive the licensor’s breach under applicable non-bankruptcy law.

“… Ponzi scheme payments to satisfy legitimate antecedent debts to defendant banks could not be avoided” by a bankruptcy trustee “absent transaction-specific proof of actual intent to defraud or the statutory elements of constructive fraud – transfer by an insolvent debtor who did not receive reasonably equivalent value in exchange,” held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Nov. 20, 2018. Stoebner v. Opportunity Finance LLC, 2018 WL 6055636 at *4 (8th Cir. Nov. 20, 2018), citing Finn v. Alliance Bank, 860 N.W. 2d 638, 653-56 (Minn. 2015).

The Bottom Line:

Garrison Keillor once said, “Sometimes I look reality straight in the eye and deny it.”[1] Being that the case arose in Minnesota, perhaps Circuit Judge Michael Melloy channeled Keillor, one of that state’s great humorists, when he authored the opinion in The Official Commit

Recently, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that overdraft payments advanced by Banks which are later repaid by their customer constitute preferential transfers under the Bankruptcy Code. In re Agriprocessors, Inc., involved a meat packing company which periodically overdrew its bank accounts, and the bank issued provisional credit to cover the overdrafts. The bank initially denominated those overdrafts as “intraday” overdrafts until the midnight settlement deadline, at which point they became “true” overdrafts.

A bankruptcy trustee or a debtor in possession has powers under the Bankruptcy Code to avoid certain transfers the debtor may have made prior to the petition date, including preferential and fraudulent transfers.

In Dahlin v. Lyondell Chemical Co., 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 1956 (8th Cir. Jan. 26, 2018), the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an argument that bankruptcy debtors were required by due process to provide more prominent notice of a case filing than they did, such that the notice might have been seen by unknown creditors with claims to assert.

The Eight Circuit Court of Appeals recently weighed in on the extent to which a debtor must search for “known” creditors in order to provide sufficient notice of its bankruptcy and satisfy due process. In Dahlin v. Lyondell Chemical Co., ___ F.3d ___ (8th Cir. Jan. 26, 2018), the Eighth Circuit determined that a “known” creditor is one that is reasonably ascertainable, and a debtor need not perform more than one reasonably diligent search to unveil the identity of “known” creditors.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed a bankruptcy court’s holding that a creditor held an unenforceable lien against a debtor’s real property because the property was owned by the entireties and the lien was thus avoidable under Bankruptcy Code § 522(f)(1). 

A copy of the opinion is available at: Link to Opinion.

The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed a bankruptcy court’s rejection of a proof of claim filed by a creditor where the claim was based upon a debt which was time barred by the creditor’s failure to comply with the applicable state law deadline for pursuing a deficiency judgment following a non-judicial foreclosure. 

A copy of the opinion is available at: Link to Opinion.