In a bankruptcy preferential transfer dispute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently held that the bankruptcy trustee could recover true overdraft covering deposits, while deposits covering intra-day overdrafts were not recoverable.
A copy of the opinion is available at: Link to Opinion.
The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan recently allowed a debtor to modify his confirmed Chapter 13 plan based upon a mistake by the debtor’s counsel. The result of the modification was to reduce the plan to 36 months from 60 and reduce the repayment to unsecured creditors by 80 percent.
A copy of In re Luman is available at: Link to Opinion.
On July 10, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued its opinion in Crawford v. LVNV Funding, LLC. That opinion began by decrying the “deluge” of proofs of claim filed by debt buyers on debts that are unenforceable under state statutes of limitations.
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. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently held, in a case of first impression, that a creditor violates the bankruptcy discharge injunction by filing a proof of claim on a debt that was previously discharged in another bankruptcy proceeding.
A copy of the opinion is available at: Link to Opinion.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Eighth Circuit vacated the bankruptcy court’s order confirming a farm debtor’s chapter 12 plan, concluding that the bankruptcy court erred by failing to hold an evidentiary hearing to determine the value of a bank’s collateral where the collateral was disputed. The Panel also concluded that the bank needed to file a proof of claim.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed the denial of bankruptcy discharge for a Chapter 7 debtor due to the debtor’s failure to keep adequate records.
In particular, the Eighth Circuit focused on a sudden and financially significant return of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of high-end watches and jewelry that left significant unanswered questions as to the whereabouts of the assets and the legitimacy of the creditor jeweler’s claim.
In determining the legal standard for holding a creditor in civil contempt for attempting to collect a debt in violation of a bankruptcy discharge order, the Supreme Court of the United States adopted an “objectively reasonable” standard, and held that a court may hold a creditor in civil contempt if there is “no fair ground of doubt” as to whether the order barred the creditor’s conduct.
Accordingly, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, which had applied a subjective standard for civil contempt.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently held that a debtor’s claim seeking to use a bankruptcy trustee’s § 544(a) strong-arm power to avoid a mortgage on the ground that it was never perfected did not require appellate review of the state court foreclosure judgment, and therefore was not barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
The Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, recently dismissed a mortgagee’s “breach of mortgage contract” action as an impermissible second refiling following prior voluntary dismissals of a 2011 foreclosure complaint and 2013 action for breach of the promissory note based upon the same note and mortgage.