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...

By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee for the Middle District of Tennessee (Nashville) Rule 3002.1 gives the Bankruptcy Court authority to impose sanctions, including punitive sanctions, as part of the rules-granted authority to award “other appropriate relief.” (Rodriguez) Blanco v. Bayview Loan Servicing LLC (In re Blanco), 2021 WL 4190170 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. September 14, 2021) Case...

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Objection to proof of claim barred by preclusion. The Chapter 13 debtor objected to Wells Fargo’s proof of claim in an adversary proceeding that alleged the note had been procured by fraud and was unenforceable; but the debtor had previously litigated those and other issues in the state court. Preclusive effect of the...

From their spring edition of The Quarterly our friends at NACTT have shared a timely piece from creditor attorney Thomas Humphries. _____________________ Thomas Humphries is an attorney with the firm of Sirote & Permutt, PC in Birmingham Alabama. Thomas represents the mortgage banking industry and various creditors in bankruptcy proceedings throughout the State of Alabama. Thomas’s practice includes the defense...

(Reprinted with permission: https://www.dailyjournal.com/) By M. Jonathan Hayes, Resnik Hayes, Moradi LLP (Los Angeles) I met with my best friend Jim King, consumer bankruptcy attorney extraordinaire, during the Thanksgiving break in 2014, several weeks before his untimely death. We met at his office in Glendale to do his oral history. Somewhere in there I told him he could borrow my...

SMALL BUSINESS REORGANIZATION ACT POSTSCRIPT #2 Recommendation of Technical Amendment to Repair Flaw in CARES Act Attempt to Increase Small Business Eligibility under SBRA Introduction In a bulletin published March 30, the Academy announced enactment on March 27 of the "Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act" (the "CARES Act"),1 and that the Act (applying only to cases commenced on...

By Regina Logsdon, Executive Director, The Academy d/b/a ConsiderChapter13.org Robert (“Bob”) G. Drummond has been the only standing Chapter 13 Trustee for the District of Montana since 1992. Originally from Montana, Mr. Drummond graduated from Montana State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Business, and received a Juris Doctorate in Law with Honors from the University of...

By Wm. Houston Brown, United States Bankruptcy Judge (Retired) Confirmation - Bankruptcy court could not sua sponte object to confirmation. Distinguishing between “self-executing” provisions of the Code and those sections that were not “self-executing,” and discussing Espinosa’s impact on that distinction, District Court held that the bankruptcy court could not sua sponte object to confirmation based on the above- median...

The Mississippi Bankruptcy Court in The Huntington National Bank vs. Ashley Mosby, case #21-11614, adversary case #21-1028, on September 1, 2022, denied the bank’s request to declare a debt non-dischargeable because the bank did not rely upon the debtor’s false statement. In this case the Debtor purchased a 2020 Dodge Challenger, financed by the bank, without disclosing she intended to...

11/14/19, the IRS issued guidance for taxpayers with certain deductible expenses to reflect changes resulting from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Revenue Procedure 2019-46, posted today on IRS.gov, updates the rules for using the optional standard mileage rates in computing the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving expense purposes. The guidance also...