In Weakley v. Eagle Logistics, 2018 WL 3188663 (11th Cir. June 29, 2018), the Eleventh Circuit considered what “facts and circumstances” surrounding a plaintiff’s failure to disclose a pending lawsuit in bankruptcy proceedings will allow the lawsuit to be dismissed on judicial-estoppel grounds. The plaintiff, Timothy Weakley, had filed two separate lawsuits against a number of defendants,…
Category: Bankruptcy
Supreme Court Grants Cert. in Bankruptcy Discharge Case
The Supreme Court granted cert. on January 12, 2018, to review Appling v. Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, LLP (In re Appling), 848 F.3d 953 (11th Cir. 2017), which we reported on below. The case, which involves the bankruptcy discharge exception for fraud, will be heard this term. Posted by Tom Byrne.
Bankruptcy Debtors Can Recover Attorneys’ Fees Spent in Enforcing Stay and Seeking Damages, Including for Appeals
Richard and Patricia Horne filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. After the bankruptcy was filed and the automatic stay imposed by Section 362(a)(1) went into effect, Mary Mantiply, an attorney, filed a state court action against the Hornes on behalf of Mantiply’s client. Mantiply repeatedly refused to dismiss the case,…
Supreme Court Scorecard: Looking Back at the 2016 Term and Forward to October
After a tough record in 2015, the Eleventh Circuit batted .400 last term at the U.S. Supreme Court. In the Court’s five merits decisions on appeal from the Eleventh Circuit, two judgments were affirmed, two were reversed, and one was vacated. The two affirmances were both in criminal cases with majority opinions by Justice Thomas….
Security Is Secure, Even When It’s in Receivership
In 2009, the SEC filed an action against Arthur Nadel and others following the collapse of a Ponzi scheme. The district court appointed a receiver to administer the defendants’ property and business affairs “and take whatever actions are necessary for the protection of the investors.” The district court also established a bar date for creditors’…
Securities Law Judgment Excepted from Discharge
On the same day the court decided Appling (below), the Eleventh Circuit issued a second bankruptcy-discharge opinion, this time addressing one of the more obscure exceptions from discharge, § 523(a)(19)(A)’s exception for judgments for securities law violations. Lunsford v. Process Technologies Services, LLC (In re Lunsford), 2017 WL 603845 (11th Cir. Feb. 15, 2017). Judge…
Court Broadly Construes Bankruptcy Discharge Exception for Fraud
One of the most litigated issues in bankruptcy court is whether a discharge of a particular claim should be granted to a debtor who has committed fraud relating to the claim, a statutory discharge exception found in section 523(a)(2)(A) and (B) of the Bankruptcy Code. The statute establishes a dichotomy between fraudulent statements regarding the…
Health Savings Accounts not exempt from bankruptcy estate in Georgia
After the Georgia Supreme Court answered a certified question, the Eleventh Circuit held that health savings account (“HSA”) funds are not property exempt from the bankruptcy estate under Georgia law. In Mooney v. Webster, No. 15-11229 (11th Cir. Jan. 27, 2017), a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petitioner claimed the assets in her HSA account as exempt…
Direct Appeal from Bankruptcy Proceeding Transferred for Lack of Jurisdiction
Federal courts have struggled with the implications of Stern v. Marshall, 564 U.S. 462 (2011), and Wellness International Network, Ltd. v. Sharif, 135 S. Ct. 1932 (2015)—in which the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires the parties’ consent before bankruptcy courts can finally adjudicate claims that neither “stem[] from the bankruptcy itself [n]or would necessarily…
Supreme Court to Decide Interplay Between Bankruptcy Code and FDCPA
This past Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, No. 16-348 (cert. granted Oct. 11, 2016), to review the Eleventh Circuit’s holding that filing a stale proof of claim in a consumer bankruptcy violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. For more details on the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion, 823 F.3d…