Two recent North Carolina bankruptcy decisions demonstrate that recovering unclaimed bankruptcy funds is no longer simply an administrative matter. Instead, disputes over court registry funds are increasingly involving competing claims, questions regarding exempt property, concerns over fraud, and heightened judicial scrutiny of third-party companies that specialize in recovering unclaimed funds.
Ashley Deady, "Bankruptcy's Blind Spot: An Examination of How the System Turns its Back on Mentally Ill Debtors," argues that while the Bankruptcy Code promises a fresh start for the "honest but unfortunate debtor," it frequently fails those whose financial distress is intertwined with mental illness.
In Hollis v. Lakeview Loan Care, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina dismissed a pro se homeowner's federal lawsuit without prejudice, finding that although the borrower had raised legitimate concerns about her mortgage servicer, she failed to properly identify the defendants, accomplish valid service of process, or plead a recognizable legal claim.
The Fourth Circuit's published decision in J. Robert van Faassen, LLM v. Greg Lindberg addresses an important question involving international arbitration: is the three-year deadline in the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA") for confirming a foreign arbitration award merely permissive, or is it a true statute of limitations?
The answer, according to the Fourth Circuit, is that the deadline means exactly what it says.
