By The Honorable John P. Gustafson Can a creditor refuse to do business with a debtor, or is such refusal a violation of the automatic stay? The case of Brown v. Penn State Employees Credit Union, 851 F.2d 81 (3rd Cir. 1988) held that a credit union’s refusal to continue to do business with a debtor who caused a loss...

The Bankruptcy Code produces some difficult results. Sometimes those results pass difficult and extend into problematic. The Bankruptcy Court for the District of Idaho crossed well over difficult in In re Clifford, 2022 WL 16727279 (Bankr. D. Id. 2022). The question addressed in Clifford is one that comes up in every Chapter 13 case – how do we calculate “Current...

By Beverly M. Burden, Standing Chapter 13 Trustee (Lexington, KY) An unscheduled creditor without notice of the bankruptcy case was denied an extension of time to file a proof of claim pursuant to Bankruptcy Rule 3002(c)(6)(A) in a recent opinion from the Eastern District of Kentucky. In the case of In re Fryman,1 the debtor did not include creditor Kentucky...

Dear Readers: Want to know why your 1L Civ Pro course is your best friend when it comes to “undue hardship” cases?  Because burdens of proof matter.  (They matter in other cases, too, but I’m in love with the case of Love v. U.S. Dept. of Education (In re Love), Case No. 19-20532-C-7, United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern...

By John P. Gustafson, United States Bankruptcy Judge, Northern District of Ohio, Western Division Click here for Part 1 B. The Duty To Disclose Post-Petition Causes Of Action. 1. The Waldron Decision. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals considered the issue of whether or not a post-petition cause of action is . . . It looks like you are not...

Bankruptcy has been the focus of the Boleman Law Firm’s 30+ year history, but my law partners and I believed it was important for our firm’s long-term health to add a new practice area that would be complimentary to bankruptcy. Even though we were filing almost 250 new Chapter 7 and 13 cases every month before the pandemic, most of...

By David Cox,1 Cox Law Group, PLLC (Lynchburg, VA) Click here for Part 1 of 3 C. Determining whether to file. Collection considerations outside of bankruptcy. Is the debtor judgment-proof? Are assets and income exempt? How active are creditors? Is the current situation likely to change? Has there been a previous filing, and if so, are there stay or exhausted...

By Lawrence R. Ahern III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) PART IV – INTRODUCTION TO CONSUMER FORECLOSURE PROCEDURES 2020 portends a flood of bankruptcy filings. In the consumer bankruptcies, trustees and debtors' counsel often are uncomfortable with the rules in Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). In this space, we have looked at topics involving the interplay of...