Business Law Insolvency Law Committee

Summary: A California appellate court has held that a judgment creditor conducting an examination of a judgment debtor may obtain a subpoena duces tecum directing the debtor's bank to produce evidence, even though no examination of the bank itself had been ordered. [Shrewsbury Management, Inc. vs. Superior Court, 2019 Westlaw 1109754 (Cal. App.).] Read more

Summary: A California appellate court has held that a purchaser of conditional sales contracts was liable for the debts of two defaulting vehicle dealerships because the senior inventory lender retained the vehicles’ title certificates. [Ron Miller Enterprises, Inc., vs. Lobel Financial Corp., Inc., 2019 Westlaw 1199523 (Cal.App.).] Read more

The following is a profile of the Honorable Mitchell D. Dembin, United States Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of California. Judge Dembin met with members of the Business Litigation Committee and the Insolvency Law Committee in his chambers at the James M. Carter & Judith N. Keep Courthouse in San Diego and discussed his personal and professional background, his appointment as a Magistrate Judge and his experience on the bench. Read more

In an unpublished memorandum decision, the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit in In re Miller, BAP No. CC 18-1267-SFL, filed March 11, 2019, reversed the bankruptcy court’s award of Rule 9011 sanctions in the amount of $50,875 because the claimant lacked standing to seek a recovery of his attorney’s fees. Read more

The following is a case update analyzing a recent case of interest, In re Harish Venkat Reddy and Deepika Basi Reddy, 589 B.R. 867 (E.D. Cal 2018). Read more

In Easley v. Collection Serv. of Nev., 910 F.3d 1286 (9th Cir. 2018), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the “Ninth Circuit”) expanded the holding in In re Schwartz-Tallard, 803 F. 3d 1095 (9th Cir. 2015) (en banc), to mean that debtors are entitled to recover appellate attorneys’ fees when successfully challenging an initial award of fees and costs awarded to them under section 362(k) for a willful violation of the automatic stay, not only when defending such award. Read more

In Bank of New York Mellon v. Lane (In re Lane), 589 B.R. 399 (9th Cir. BAP 2018), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit (the "BAP") held that disallowance of a claim for lack of standing by the claimant did not also void the underlying lien under 11 U.S.C. section 506(d) because no argument had been made by the debtor that the lien or underlying obligation was substantively invalid. Read more

The United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit held that in a case converted from chapter 13 to chapter 7, the relevant date for determining a debtor’s homestead exemption was fixed on the date of the chapter 13 filing. Klein v. Good (In re Good) BAP No. WW-18-1125-KuTaB, 2018 Bankr. LEXIS 3609 (9th Cir. BAP 2018). The BAP affirmed the bankruptcy court’s ruling denying the chapter 7 trustee’s objection to the Debtors’ homestead exemption as untimely, and found no abuse of discretion in its ruling that equitable estoppel was not applicable. Read more

Summary: A district court in North Dakota has held that under the Seventh Amendment, a plaintiff's corporate veil-piercing claim was for the jury to decide, rather than for the judge. [Marchan vs. John Miller Farms, Inc., 2018 Westlaw 6518660 (D. N.D.).] Read more

Summary: A bankruptcy court in Georgia has held that an erroneous and false satisfaction recorded by an unauthorized third party interloper nevertheless destroyed a security deed held by an innocent mortgage lender because the erroneous satisfaction incorrectly stated that the interloper was the assignee of the original loan. [In re Bowers, 2018 Westlaw 6824023 (Bankr. M.D. Ga.).] Read more