Joining the Tenth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit also has held that chapter 13 trustees are not paid their fees when cases are dismissed before confirmation. The identical issue was argued on February 15 before the Second Circuit.
In short order, we’ll have either unanimity or a split of circuits. A split will give rise to an issue worthy of a grant of certiorari by the Supreme Court.
Notably, the Ninth Circuit’s opinion on June 12 adopted reasoning in an amicus brief filed in support of the debtor by the National Consumer Bankruptcy Rights Center and National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.
A district judge in Virginia held that a debtor’s appeal from an order confirming the debtor’s chapter 13 plan was equitably moot.
In his December 11 opinion, District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff of.....
In chapter 7, the retainer that an individual debtor pays to his or her lawyer likely will not require the lawyer to defend adversary proceedings, such as those attacking the dischargeability of a.....
Three bankruptcy judges in St. Louis sat en banc and wrote an opinion that effectively bars bifurcated fee arrangements in the Eastern District of Missouri.
Recognizing “the difficulty that many.....
In the world of bankruptcy, the validity of the doctrine of equitable mootness is an issue that the Supreme Court has been ducking. On March 19, the Court handed down a non-bankruptcy decision on.....
If a trustee recovers an estate asset after the debtor made their last payment under a chapter 13 plan, the recovery goes to the debtor in the absence of a provision in the plan directing the asset to.....
Directing a vulgar insult at a debtor is no violation of the automatic stay. Indeed, basing a contempt motion on a text message to a debtor that said, “You’re such a piece of s—t,” “has absolutely no.....
The Supreme Court created a problem for cash-starved debtors when the Court held in Lamie that a discharge prevents a lawyer from requiring a chapter 7 debtor to pay for post-petition services after.....
Bankruptcy Judge Scott M. Grossman of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., explained why “merely selling a debt to another holder” does not “somehow immunize a creditor and create a fair ground of doubt as to.....
A lender and its lawyer were sanctioned under Bankruptcy Rule 9011 for filing a dischargeability complaint against a consumer based only on the allegation that it must have been fraud because the.....
“[W]hen an attorney learns that a client has engaged in fraudulent or unauthorized conduct,” the lawyer “must take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal,”.....