Business Law Insolvency Law Committee

The United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan (the “Court”) recently affirmed a bankruptcy court’s decision that because a deed conveying an interest in commercial property was never “delivered” and therefore never “accepted” by the debtor, the property never became property of the debtor’s chapter 7 estate. Read more

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (the “Court”), reversing the district court, recently ruled that a debtor who had discharged a mortgage loan had standing to assert a claim under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA or “the Act”) against a servicer who continued to report the discharged debt as past due, causing an artificially low credit score. Read more

The United States District Court for the District of Delaware has dismissed the post-foreclosure complaint of a secured lender on “D&O claims” allegedly acquired from a corporate borrower in a UCC foreclosure Read more

In NLG, LLC v. Horizon Hospitality Group, LLC (In re Hazan), ___ F.3d ___, 2021 WL 33907781 (11th Cir., Sept. 1, 2021) (“Hazan”), the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (the “Court”) held the Bankruptcy Court’s judgment sustaining the adversary proceeding claims of the debtor Read more

Applying 7th Circuit precedent, a Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin (the “Court”) ruled that obligations of a debtor created by a personal guaranty Read more

The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit in Zamora v. Perez (In re Perez), 628 B.R. 327 (9th Cir. BAP June 17, 2021) found that the trustee’s actions did not result in “recovery of the property” within the meaning of Section 522(g) and therefore the trustee’s objection to the debtor’s homestead exemption was properly overruled. Read more

Interpreting Ohio’s versions of two uniform acts, the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (UFTA), the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (the “Court”) ruled that an involuntary debtor’s payments to a lender under the parties’ revolving loan Read more

A recent Bankruptcy Court decision from the Western District of Washington (the “Court”) disagreed with a 2007 case from the Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) and a 2021 case by the Bankruptcy Court of the District of Idaho Read more

In Guevarra v. Whatley (In re Guevarra), 2021 WL 1179619 (BAP 9th Cir. Mar. 29, 2021), the Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (the “BAP”) vacated the bankruptcy court’s decision to sustain an objection to the claimed California wildcard exemption Read more

The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit (BAP) reversed a bankruptcy court decision that had ruled a debtor’s disclaimer of his interest in a trust was invalid because he had accepted the interest before he waived it, resulting in a claim for a fraudulent transfer by the trustee. Read more