Memorial Day 2023

By Lawrence R. Ahern III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Introduction – The Taggart Ruling Last year, the Ninth Circuit in In re Taggart1 ruled that an act in violation of the discharge injunction did not empower a court to find a creditor in contempt, if the creditor believed in good faith that the discharge injunction did not apply—even if...

By Lawrence R. Ahern, III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Introduction As of April 16, 2020, more than 22,000,000 people in the United States were reported to have filed for unemployment aid, "a staggering loss of jobs that has wiped out a decade of employment gains and pushed families to line up at food banks as they await government help."1...

Chapter 13 Trustees occupy unique positions.  Every day they work with the courts, clerks’ offices, debtors, creditors, and their attorneys, and the Office of the United States Trustees.  Within ethical bounds, it is important that Chapter 13 trustees build and maintain relationships with each of these constituents.  Civility, professionalism, and trust are the mainstays for all of these interactions. We...

One of our very newest trustees is very familiar to many of us. After serving ten years as Chief of Staff (a/k/a Staff Attorney) to Martha Bronitsky, on August 1, 2021, Nima Ghazvini was appointed Chapter 13 Standing Trustee for the Districts of Hawaii, Guam, and Northern Mariana Islands. What you may not know is that Ghazvini was born in...

"Finality" in Bankruptcy When is an order within a bankruptcy case "final"? When must a party to the proceeding appeal within 14 days? When may a party either seek interlocutory review or sit back and wait until something more occurs to make the order final? Final orders are appealable. In civil actions, this is a relatively easy proposition to apply...