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Here, the Court sustained the debtor’s objection to a 910-car creditor’s inclusion of post-petition attorney fees in its secured claim. The Court found that § 502(b) directs courts to determine the amount of a claim as of the date of the filing of the petition;
§ 1322(b) allows modification of pre-petition contractual rights; and no section of the bankruptcy code expressly permits post-petition attorney fees for a 910-car creditor.
Here, the court found that a state court jury had awarded the plaintiff punitive damages based upon fraud, making a determination of fraud essential to the state court judgment and satisfying the final element necessary for the court to apply collateral estoppel to the plaintiff’s cause of action under § 523(a)(2)(A). As a result, the court found that the punitive damage award was nondischargeable under § 523(a)(2)(A). The court also found that a debt arising from the debtor’s embezzlement of the plaintiff’s vehicle was nondischargeable under § 523(a)(4).
In this case, the United States Trustee moved to dismiss the debtor’s chapter 7 case under § 707(b)(2) and § 707(b)(3). Because the court found that the trustee had not calculated the debtor’s current monthly income in accordance with § 101(10A), the court denied the relief sought under § 707(b)(2). After considering the totality of the circumstances of the debtor’s financial condition, including the debtor’s ability to pay her creditors, the court found that the granting of relief under chapter 7 would be an abuse of the provisions of the chapter and granted the trustee’s motion to dismiss under § 707(b)(3), subject to the debtor converting her case to a case under chapter 13 within 14 days.
In this case, a creditor moved to convert a high-income debtor's case from chapter 7 to chapter 11 under § 706(b) and, in the alternative, moved to dismiss the case under § 707(a) and (b). The court denied the creditor's motion to convert under § 706(b) because it found that conversion would not benefit all parties in interest. The court also denied the creditor's motion to dismiss under § 707(a) because it found no evidence that the debtor had engaged in the type of extreme misconduct that would qualify under Eighth Circuit precedent as bad faith sufficient to dismiss the case "for cause" under § 707(a). Finally, the court denied the creditor's motion to dismiss under § 707(b) because it found that the debtor did not have primarily consumer debts, making § 707(b) inapplicable in this case.
The court found that A.C.A. § 18-60-308 did not bar the debtor from pleading as a compulsory counterclaim an allegation of non-compliance with the AR statutory foreclosure act in a previous state court unlawful detainer action. Because she waived her compulsory counterclaim, she was now precluded from attempting to set aside the foreclosure sale by raising the issue in her bankruptcy case.
In this case, the court found that the debtors’ mobile home was a fixture based on the cancellation of title of the home and the fact that it sat on a permanent foundation. The court also overruled the debtors’ objection to the creditor’s proof of claim based on the unequivocal testimony of the debtors’ expert opinion that the creditor’s proof of claim was accurate.
The court denied the creditors’ motion to abandon commercial tort claims finding that the creditors’ security interest did not encompass the tort claims.
The court denied the debtor’s discharge based on the debtor’s deficient and inaccurate schedules and his clear attempt to not pay one of his secured creditors. Between the order for relief in the debtor’s initial skeletal chapter 13 filing and his subsequent conversion of the case to chapter 7, the debtor apparently paid many of his creditors and then failed to list those payments on his later-filed schedules because “they were no longer creditors.” The debtor also failed to disclose his business, the judgment obtained by the creditor that he attempted not to pay (despite this creditor garnishing the debtor’s bank one week prior to filing), and money in two bank accounts that he characterized as “customers’ money.” Of note, the attorney that represented the debtor in the state court action is the same attorney that filed the deficient and inaccurate schedules on behalf of the debtor.
The Court enforced the parties’ agreement to arbitrate and held the adversary proceeding in abeyance. The Court found that the parties’ agreement to arbitrate did not inherently conflict with or jeopardize the objectives of the bankruptcy code.
The Court denied the trustee’s motion for turnover of a post-petition bonus payment the debtor acquired approximately one month after filing a voluntary chapter 7 petition. The Court found that the expectation of a bonus was not enough to bring the post-petition bonus into the debtor’s estate under § 541(a)(1) because the debtor’s employer retained the discretion to pay the bonus up to the time the bonus was paid.