Monthly Archives: September 2010
Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P.A., et al v. United States – Supreme Court Holds that Attorneys are “Debt Relief Agencies”
On March 8, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P.A., et al v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 1324 (2010), that attorneys are “debt relief agencies” who are limited in their ability to provide pre-bankruptcy planning advice to consumers and obligating them to provide additional disclosures in their advertisements. The Supreme Court rejected the Eighth Circuit’s holding that the prohibition of 11 USC § 526(a)(4) upon debt relief agencies to “advise an assisted person either to incur more debt in contemplation of filing bankruptcy” was unconstitutional as applied to attorneys. The Supreme Court articulated that the […]
In re Endeavor Highrise LP – Defendant Counterclaimant’s Jury Demand Stricken by Bankruptcy Court
In a case of apparent first impression, in In re Endeavor Highrise LP, 425 B.R. 402 (Bankr.S.D.Tex. 2010),by memorandum opinion dated March 12, 2010, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Souther District of Texas concluded that the filing a counterclaim against the bankruptcy trustee as part of a defendant’s answer to the trustee’s adversary complaint was the equivalent of filing a proof of claim for jurisdictional purposes. As a result, the defendant waived its demand for a jury trial. On the trustee’s motion, the jury demand was stricken.
Hamilton, as Chapt. 13 Trustee v. Lanning – Supreme Court Opines on Definition of Projected Disposable Income in a Chapter 13 Case
In an 8-1 opinion in Hamilton v. Lanning, issued on June 7, 2010, the Supreme Court had a second opportunity to construe the meaning of the 2005 BAPCPA amendments. At issue in Hamilton was the definition of “projected disposable income,” a key term in Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code because a Chapter 13 debtor must, if a creditor objects to his repayment plan, commit all of his “projected disposable income” to be received during the duration of his plan to plan payments. The Supreme Court affirmed the Tenth Circuit’s holding that a court should apply a forward-looking test rather […]
