ATexasBankruptcyLawyersBlog

Could A Texas Bankruptcy Lawyers Blog Be Sued for Defamation in Idaho Bankruptcy Court? A Discussion About In Personam Jurisdiction

12/26/21

Consider the following hypothetical:

Assume that I wrote a story about a restaurant patron from Oklahoma who filed a claim in the case of a Texas restaurant claiming that he got food poisoning from eating a batch of bad French fries. In the course of describing the patron's travails, I state that the patron must have felt like he was living in his own private Idaho hell and then quote the following lyrics from the B-52s:

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Meet Judge Parker

12/11/21

 Judge Michael Parker was sworn in as the newest Bankruptcy Judge in the Western District of Texas on November 1, 2021. He was a law clerk to Judge Ronald B. King, the judge who he replaced and practiced in San Antonio with Norton Rose Fulbright for many years. He was kind enough to answer some written questions that I sent him and I did some research on my own. Here are some things you should know about Judge Parker. 

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A Cautionary Tale for Zoom Depositions

12/11/21

 By now, we have grown used to Zoom hearings, Zoom mediations and Zoom depositions. However, a case I heard discussed at the ABI Winter Leadership Conference points out that as ubiquitous as these technologically assisted interactions are, they can pose both challenges and perils to the unprepared. 

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When Is That Answer Due? It Depends On What Court You Are In

12/07/21

Knowing when to answer a lawsuit is important to avoid a default judgment. However, different types of courts have different rules for how to serve a complaint and when the answer is due. While I have long known about the rule for Texas state courts, I did not realize that federal bankruptcy courts and district courts have different rules. 

Bankruptcy Court

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Fifth Circuit Binds Debtor to Plan Terms in Subsequent Case

11/17/21

 Recently I wrote about a Fifth Circuit case where a creditor tried to escape the terms of a confirmed plan in a subsequent case. Now the Court has written an opinion about a debtor that tried to do the same thing. Fortunately the result was the same in both cases: res judicata applied. BVS Construction, Inc. v. Prosperity Bank (Matter of BVS Construction, Inc.), Case No. 21-50274 (5th Cir. 11/15/21). You can find the decision here. 

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Fifth Circuit Reminds Courts About Summary Judgment Standard

11/15/21

Summary judgment was intended to be a method of disposing of cases where there are not any disputed issues for the court to trial. Sometimes it seems that summary judgment is a way to get rid of cases that the court doesn't want to try. In a new opinion about insurance coverage, the Fifth Circuit has reminded lower courts that no genuine issue of material fact means exactly that. Guzman v. Allstate Assurance Company, Case No;.

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Fifth Circuit Binds Creditor To Plan Terms in Subsequent Case

11/15/21

Third party releases are a controversial topic with Congress considering legislation to ban them. However, Judge Greg Costa, writing for the Fifth Circuit, has distinguished between an impermissible third-party release and a plan provision reducing a guarantor's liability in a new opinion.  New Falls Corporation v. LaHaye (Matter of LaHaye), No. 19-30795 (5th Cir. 11/12/21) which can be found here.

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Exaggerated Allegations Lead to Sanctions in Stay Violation Case

11/07/21

Many consumer debtor attorneys have chosen to enhance their revenue by filing suit on relatively minor violations of the automatic stay or discharge. There is nothing inherently wrong with these suits since they vindicate the rights that debtors receive when they file bankruptcy. However, some practitioners have resorted to filing form complaints which go on for hundreds of paragraphs with boilerplate allegations about the callousness of the particular creditor.

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Texas Courts Move Closer to Federal Standard in Proving Up Attorneys' Fees

11/04/21

Federal court practitioners, particularly those appearing in bankruptcy court, are familiar with the requirements of the lodestar method for proving up attorneys' fees. Under Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714 (5th Cir. 1974) and subsequent cases, attorneys were used to producing contemporaneous time sheets in sufficient detail to describe the work performed and the rate charged.

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