By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Disgorgement of fees for nondisclosure. The Tenth Circuit held that the “default sanction” for an attorney’s failure to satisfy disclosure obligation is full disgorgement of fees paid. While full disgorgement may not be required in particular circumstances, the “default sanction” principle required reversal and remand. The bankruptcy court, affirmed by the BAP, had...

Employers who provide paid family and medical leave to their employees might qualify for a credit that can reduce the taxes they owe. It’s called the employer credit for family and medical leave. Here are some facts about the credit to help employers find out if they might be able to claim it. To be eligible, an employer must: Have...

NCLC’s Executive Director Rich Dubois and NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson are calling on Congress and federal regulators to take action to prevent an impending foreclosure crisis in communities of color, in an opinion editorial published yesterday in The Hill. The op-ed highlights how the cumulative impact of decades of housing policy discrimination on African American homeownership, coupled with...

By Pardis Akhavan, Resnik Hayes Moradi LLP (Encino, CA) The bankruptcy court in In re Ritter, 2021 WL 864092 (Bkrtcy C.D. Cal, 2021)(J. Tighe),denied debtors’ motion for an immediate discharge under Section 1328(i) ruling that Congress apparently did not intend that a chapter 13 debtor who obtains a loan modification should also receive a discharge, on that basis alone at...

By John M. Hauber, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee (Indianapolis, IN) I have recently written an article for the NACTT Quarterly, that may or may not be published at the time of this writing, which is simply a stream-of-conscious style response to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s desire to modify the Bankruptcy Code based upon her perception that debtors’ attorneys get rich off...

A month-to-month residential lease can be assumed and defaults cured in a Chapter 13 plan. (Rucker) In re Mattoon, 2022 WL 2080184 (Bankr. E.D. Tenn. June 9, 2022) Case Summary Sarah Mattoon executed a lease with Open Doors in September of 2019. Several of Ms. Mattoon’s family members lived with her in the rented apartment including her “companion” and her...

Lawrence R. Ahern, III Brown & Ahern Nashville, Tennessee Appendix A Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Amendments Effective December 1, 2020 The proposed rules and Committee notes are set forth below, with changes indicated by striking through deleted text and underlining new text. Rule 2002. Notices to Creditors, Equity Security Holders, Administrators in Foreign Proceedings, Persons Against Whom Provisional Relief...