The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Sixth Circuit recently held that a condominium unit owners association did not violate a debtor’s Chapter 7 discharge order by scheduling a sheriff’s sale to complete a prepetition foreclosure.

Rejecting the bankruptcy court’s conclusion that the in rem foreclosure sale was scheduled to induce payment of discharged pre-petition condominium fees, the Sixth Circuit BAP noted that “all foreclosure litigation potentially can induce payments of discharged debt to avoid a foreclosure sale.”

The Supreme Court of Ohio recently held that, when debt on promissory note secured by mortgage has been discharged in bankruptcy, the holder of the note may not pursue collection against the maker of note, but the mortgagee has standing to foreclose on the collateral property, and can use the amounts due on the note as evidence to establish that it may collect from the forced sale of the property.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently held that “[a]n accurate and complete proof of claim on a time-barred debt is not false, deceptive, misleading, unfair, or unconscionable under the FDCPA.”

In arriving at this holding, the Court declined to follow the Eleventh Circuit’s rulings in Crawford and Johnson.

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

Reversing a bankruptcy court order in favor of the debtor, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland recently held that a bank that had allowed amounts to be withdrawn from a home equity credit line after the HELOC had been frozen could still recover those amounts from the debtor.

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

As an example of the conflicting and contrasting court rulings on the effect of surrender in bankruptcy (see our prior update), the District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Fifth District, recently dismissed a borrower’s appeal from a final judgment of foreclosure because the borrower admitted during the course of his bankruptcy proceeding that he owed the mortgage debt and stated his intention to surrender the mortgage

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida recently denied a creditor’s motion to compel the debtor to surrender mortgaged property and also denied the debtor’s motion to stay the case, holding that a chapter 7 debtor who indicates surrender of real property in his statement of intention is not obligated to surrender that property to the lienholder, whether or not the property is administered by the chapter 7 trustee.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York recently held that a confirmable Chapter 13 plan cannot both “vest” title to real property and “surrender” that property to a secured lender, and that the secured lender may refuse to accept the vesting in satisfaction of its claim.

Thus, the Court held that a debtor may not force the transfer of title in collateral to a secured creditor in satisfaction of the secured creditor’s claim, without the consent of the secured creditor.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently held that a transfer of a tax lien to a tax buyer under Texas law does not constitute an extension of credit that is subject to the federal Truth in Lending Act (TILA).

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

In a much-anticipated follow-up to its 2014 decision in Crawford v. LVNV Funding, LLC, 738 F.3d 1254 (11th Cir. 2014), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently held that there is no irreconcilable conflict between the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the Bankruptcy Code.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida recently held that a wholly unsecured second mortgage lien may be “stripped off,” even if the property encumbered by the lien is no longer part of the bankruptcy estate due to abandonment by the bankruptcy trustee.

The Bankruptcy Court did not specifically reference the consolidated cases now before the U.S. Supreme Court in Bank of Amer. v. Toledo-Cardona, and Bank of Amer. v. Caulkett, which should resolve the issue of whether a wholly unsecured lien may be stripped off in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.