The District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District ("Second DCA"), recently held that a notice of assignment of a mortgage loan pursuant to the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act ("FCCPA"), § 559.715, Florida Statutes, is not a condition precedent to filing a mortgage foreclosure action, but certified the question to the Florida Supreme Court for resolution as one of great public importance.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida recently denied a mortgagee's motion to reopen a Chapter 7 case to compel the surrender of real property, citing a five-year delay in filing the motion.
In so ruling, the Court agreed with an earlier ruling from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida (In re Plummer, 513 B.R. 135 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2014)), distinguishing "surrender" from "foreclosure," and holding that a creditor cannot use the Bankruptcy Code to circumvent the obligations imposed by state law.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida recently overruled a debtor's objection to a mortgagee's secured claim and denied the debtor's motion to determine secured status, holding that the issues should have been brought by adversary proceeding, and in any event neither Florida's statute of limitations nor its statute of repose barred enforcement of the note and mortgage. A copy of the opinion is attached.
In Venture Bank v. Lapides, 800 F.3d 442 (8th Cir. 2015), the Eighth Circuit found that a bank could not recover from its borrower and, in fact, had violated the post-discharge injunction by relying on change in terms agreements which were ineffective to reaffirm a debt discharged in the borrower’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
A secured lender had to “pay the [encumbered] Property’s maintenance expenses incurred while the [bankruptcy] trustee was trying to sell the Property,” held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Dec. 29, 2015. In re Domistyle, Inc., 2015 WL 9487732, at *1 (5th Cir. Dec. 29, 2015).
In a case addressing what it means to "surrender" property under the Bankruptcy Code, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently held that a Chapter 7 trustee's abandonment of real property only restores legal title to the debtors as if no bankruptcy petition had been filed, and does not also give the debtors the right to contest the mortgagee's foreclosure if the debtors elected to surrender the property.
On November 23, 2015, Southern District of Florida District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra issued an opinion affirming an order granting a creditor's motion to compel surrender of real property pursuant to a statement of intention entered by Southern District of Florida Bankruptcy Judge Paul G. Hyman in the bankruptcy proceedings of David and Donna Failla. Failla v. Citibank, N.A. (In re Failla), Civ. No.: 15-80328-CIV-KAM, (S.D. Fla. Nov. 23, 2015), aff'd, 529 B.R. 786 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 2014).
On November 23, 2015, in the first appellate decision of its kind, the District Court for the Southern District of Florida affirmed a bankruptcy court order to compel chapter 7 debtors to surrender real property by directing the debtors to cease all foreclosure defense. The decision in Failla v. Citibank, N.A. (In re Failla), case no. 15-80328, marks the first decision from a federal appellate court to address the question of whether a bankruptcy court may enter an order directing a debtor to cease defending a mortgage foreclosure suit pending in state court.
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.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida recently held that, at a minimum, “surrender” under Bankruptcy Code §§ 521 and 1325 means a debtor cannot take an overt act that impedes a secured creditor from foreclosing its interest in secured property.
In so holding, the Court found that actively contesting a post-bankruptcy foreclosure case is inconsistent with a “surrender” of the property.