Upcoming Seminar- Protecting the Creditor's Rights During Bankruptcy

Jorge M. Abril, Esq. is scheduled to speak at the National Business Institute's upcoming seminar entitled Protecting the Creditor's Rights During Bankruptcy, which takes place December 6, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Miami. The program description reads:

Strategic Guide to Bankruptcy From the Creditor's Viewpoint
The debtor who's been dodging repayment for months has just filed for bankruptcy. Are you stuck with an unpaid account or are there ways to continue trying to collect? Join us for an engaging analysis of creditors' rights in bankruptcy and learn how to achieve the best possible result in the proceeding. Register today!

• Gain real-life strategies for lifting automatic stay in various scenarios.
• Clarify the priority of claims and determine the creditor's chances of retrieval.
• Explore creditors' options in every type of bankruptcy.
• Wisely advise the creditors in Chapter 11 cases on participation in creditors' committees.
• Gain a clear picture of the debtor's financial situation with skillful use of Rule 2004 exams.
• Find out what special rights landlords, suppliers, and equipment lessors have in bankruptcy.
• Find out what 10 questions to ask before getting started on the case.
• Maintain your impeccable reputation with tips for avoiding misrepresentation and harassment.
• Learn how to prevent execution/sale and secure post-petition interest.

Jorge will speak on issues relating to the ethical representation of creditors during Bankruptcy.

New Blog Discussing Hospital and Health Care Reimbursement News: Healthcare Provider Payment

The authors of the Florida Collection Law Blog are pleased to announce the creation of Healthcare Provider Payment, a blog discussing news, legislation, and recent case law of interest to health plan administrators, healthcare practitioners, and other medical professionals, including hospital business offices, physician practice groups, and individual providers. Like this blog, Healthcare Provider Payment is authored by the attorneys at Jorge M. Abril, P.A.

Articles relating to healthcare reimbursement that are also relevant to Florida creditors and collection professionals in general will be cross-posted here in the future (and vice versa), but the new blog will have more of a national scope and will deal with broader issues relating to Managed Care, provider payment, and other health law, policy, and regulations, which are not always appropriate for this blog.  We will continue to post content relevant to Florida creditors and collection professionals here. We begin there by reposting all articles from this blog posted under the Healthcare category, dealing with issues relevant to those in the medical profession.

Florida Bankruptcy Court- Funds Held by Chapter 13 Trustee Are Subject to Garnishment When the Case is Dismissed

A colleague has posted an interesting article on the Bankruptcy Law Network regarding a case decided last month in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida. According to the holding, when a Chapter 13 case is dismissed, a creditor may subject the Trustee to a writ of garnishment under Florida law and require the Trustee to turn over to the creditor all postpetition payments made by the Debtor pursuant to a proposed repayment plan. The case, In re Fischer, No. 6:09-bk-07498-KSJ, 2010 WL 2947165 (Bkrtcy. M.D. Fla. July 16, 2010), is available here. The blog article can be accessed here. Comments aren't available on that blog, and the holding should be of interest to Bankruptcy practitioners and creditors in Florida, so I'll discuss it here.

The relevant background is not particularly complicated: the Debtor filed a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy case, and at some point, the case was dismissed because the Debtor could no longer make the plan payments. The court entered an order dismissing the case and requiring the Trustee to return to the debtor the money that the debtor previously paid to the Trustee, as required by 11 U.S.C.A. §1326(a)(2), which provides:

"A payment made under paragraph (1)(A) shall be retained by the trustee until confirmation or denial of confirmation. If a plan is confirmed, the trustee shall distribute any such payment in accordance with the plan as soon as is practicable. If a plan is not confirmed, the trustee shall return any such payments not previously paid and not yet due and owing to creditors pursuant to paragraph (3) to the debtor, after deducting any unpaid claim allowed under section 503(b)."

After the case was dismissed, but before the Trustee got around to finalizing the administration of the estate and returning the money to the Debtor, a Florida judgment creditor ran to state court and obtained a writ of garnishment, requiring the Trustee to turn over the money in its possession belonging to the Debtor to the creditor.

While the Bankruptcy case is pending, obviously that wouldn't work, because any money in the possession of the Trustee at that time would be in custodia legis, and because the automatic stay under §362 of the Bankruptcy Code would prevent the creditor from obtaining the writ of garnishment in the first place. According to the Fischer court, however, the stay is lifted when the dismissal order is entered, and as a result, the Trustee essentially becomes a general debtor of the Debtor at that point, which means it may be subject to garnishment under state law. The court didn't feel compelled to discuss the issue at length, but it did cite a number of cases, some allowing the garnishment and some refusing to allow it.

The courts refusing to allow the garnishment generally looked no further than the plain language of §1326(a)(2) - "the trustee shall return any such payments not previously paid and not yet due and owing to creditors pursuant to paragraph (3) to the debtor, after deducting any unpaid claim allowed under section 503(b)." This language, 'shall return,' appears absolute and qualified only by the requirement to deduct administrative expenses. Some of these courts also ruled on policy grounds, finding that dismissal of the Chapter 13 case is supposed to leave the creditors on equal footing as they were before the Bankruptcy was filed, and promoting a race to the Trustee would not further the policies of encouraging debtors to file Chapter 13 or ensuring orderly and efficient disposition of the Bankruptcy case. Additionally, resort was made to presuming that Congress likely foresaw that creditors would attempt to make claims on funds held by the Trustee under the circumstances at hand, and that through the language requiring the Trustee simply to return the funds to the Debtor, Congress intended to foreclose this possibility. Some courts also held that returning the money to the Debtor does not conflict with state law, because any lien on the funds could follow the funds to the Debtor and be adjudicated in state court subsequent to the Trustee's disbursement. Most of these arguments are compelling, save, in my opinion, for the last. We all know that as soon as the money is returned to the Debtor, it will if at all possible be gone before the creditor can get back to state court, especially where the Debtor knows the creditor will attempt to make a claim. Here are the cases available on Google Scholar: In re Sexton, 397 B.R. 375 (Bkrtcy. M.D. Tenn. 2008); In re Inyamah, 378 B.R. 183 (Bkrtcy. S.D. Ohio 2007); In re Bailey, 330 B.R. 775 (Bkrtcy. D. Ore. 2005); In re Oliver, 222 B.R. 272 (Bkrtcy. E.D. Va. 1998); In re Walter, 199 B.R. 390 (Bkrtcy. C.D. Ill. 1996); In re Clifford, 182 B.R. 229 (Bkrtcy. N.D. Ill. 1995).

The courts allowing the garnishment generally relied on the interplay between §1326(a)(2) on one hand, and the automatic stay, which is lifted immediately upon entry of the dismissal order, and the definition of the estate, which is terminated upon dismissal, on the other. Interestingly, many of these cases dealt with Federal Tax liens, for which the analysis should be different, since there is no question of Supremacy and since the Federal Tax law is very clear: "Notwithstanding any other law of the United States, no property or rights shall be exempt from levy other than the property specifically made exempt by subsection (a). 26 U.S.C.A. §6334(c). The cited cases that are available on Google Scholar can be read at the following links: In re Mischler, 223 B.R. 17 (Bkrtcy. M.D. Fla. 1998); In re Schlapper, 195 B.R. 805 (Bkrtcy. M.D. Fla. 1996); In re Steenstra, 307 B.R. 732 (B.A.P. 1st Cir. 2004); In re Beam, 192 F.3d 941 (9th Cir. 1999); In re Brown, 280 B.R. 231 (Bkrtcy. E.D. Wis. 2001); In re Doherty, 229 B.R. 461 (Bkrtcy. E.D. Wa. 1999).

Whether you agree with the former group of cases or the latter, one thing is clear, especially given that all the Florida cases cited above have allowed the garnishment- the Florida creditor should diligently monitor the progress of the debtor's Bankruptcy case and should seek the advice of counsel with respect to the protection and enforcement of its rights and remedies in and out of Bankruptcy Court to the fullest extent allowable by law.

Pintos v. Pacific Creditors Revisited: Fair Credit Reporting Act Permissible Purposes

Readers of this blog may recall my criticism of the Ninth Circuit's decision in Pintos v. Pacific Creditors Association, No. 04-17485 (April 30, 2009), in which the court held that debt collection does not necessarily constitute a permissible purpose under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to obtain a consumer's credit report from one of the major credit bureaus. The decision came up for en banc review earlier this summer.

Not surprisingly, the court denied the petition for review, but the opinion denying review, as well as the dissents thereto, are particularly noteworthy. The majority added a lengthy footnote to its earlier opinion, clarifying that its analysis is limited to permissible purposes under 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(a)(3)(A), which allows a credit report to be obtained by a person who "intends to use the information in connection with a credit transaction involving the consumer on whom the information is to be furnished and involving the extension of credit to, or review or collection of an account of, the consumer." The footnote continues, "we need not determine whether PCA had a permissible purpose under any other §1681b subsection. On remand, Defendants may argue that PCA was authorized to obtain Pintos’s report under a different subsection." This seems to be more than a subtle suggestion that there is another permissible purpose that is applicable to the case at bar, although the majority does not clue us in to any specific provision.

Next to note, the Chief Judge dissented from the majority's denial of en banc review, on several grounds. First, he hearkened back to the dissent to the original opinion, which took issue with the majority's distinction between obtaining a credit report in the process of collecting a judgment (permissible, in the eyes of the majority) and obtaining a credit report in the collection of an account before there was a judgment (not permissible according to the majority). As I previously wrote, the court's prior decisions did not support this distinction, nor did the FTC's commentary (nor common sense, for that matter). Next, the Chief Judge directed the majority's attention to §1681a(m) and §1681b(c). Both of these sections make reference to accessing a credit report in connection with a "credit or insurance transaction that is not initiated by the consumer," and §1681a(m) provides that that phrase does not include a report obtained for the purposes of collecting an account. In other words, debt collection always involves a transaction initiated by the consumer, according to the language of the FCRA. In missing this point, according to the Chief Judge, the majority has "flunk[ed] Statutory Interpretation 101."

Another judge wrote a second dissenting opinion, essentially stating that it's in everyone's best interests- including the consumer's- to allow debt collectors to obtain credit reports in the collection process, because it helps keep costs to collect down, and if the costs are increased, that increase will eventually be passed on to consumers. As a creditor's attorney, I like that argument, but I don't think it sticks. A similar argument can be made against the FDCPA's prohibition on harassing debtors- if collectors were allowed to threaten debtors, collectors would probably have an easier time collecting accounts (at least some), and this would decrease the costs to collect, causing a savings that would sooner or later reach consumers. Actually, similar arguments can be fashioned with respect to most consumer protection statutes reductio ad absurdum- they have some negative effect because they make reaching the consumer more difficult. Of course, this line of reasoning is never employed in construing these statutes; nor should it be.

Musings on statutory interpretation and logical constructs aside, it seems likely that we have not seen the last of this case. According to this post, Ninth Circuit en banc reviews that are denied with a dissenting opinion in which certiorari is granted are overturned by the Supreme Court an astonishing 90% of the time- and this one has two dissents. We'll see.

Does the FDCPA Allow an Association to Communicate with a Tenant Under the Florida Condominium Act's Recent Amendments?

The Florida Condominium Act, Chapter 718, Florida Statutes, was recently amended to provide that if a unit is occupied by a tenant and the unit owner is delinquent on any monetary obligation to the association, the association may demand in writing that the tenant pay future rents and other monetary obligations of the tenant directly to the association until the association releases the tenant or the tenant vacates the premises, in order to satisfy the unit owner's obligations to the association. At first glance, it would appear that taking such an action on the part of the association would constitute a violation of the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), particularly 15 U.S.C.A. § 1692c's prohibition on communication with third parties regarding the debt. For several reasons, however, we believe the Condominium Act's amendments are not always inconsistent with the FDCPA.

In order to more fully understand the operation of the amendment, we must review its actual language, which can be found at Chapter 2010-174, Laws of Florida (beginning on page 47). It provides, in pertinent part:

"If the unit is occupied by a tenant and the unit owner is delinquent in paying any monetary obligation due to the association, the association may make a written demand that the tenant pay the future monetary obligations related to the cooperative share to the association and the tenant must make such payment. The demand is continuing in nature, and upon demand, the tenant must pay the monetary obligations to the association until the association releases the tenant or the tenant discontinues tenancy in the unit. The association must mail written notice to the unit owner of the association’s demand that the tenant make payments to the association. The association shall, upon request, provide the tenant with written receipts for payments made. A tenant who acts in good faith in response to a written demand from an association is immune from any claim from the unit owner."

It should first be noted that the provision states that the association "may" elect this remedy, not that it must. Therefore, it cannot be said that this provision is in direct conflict with the FDCPA, because the association can simply choose not to elect this remedy if it fears it will violate the FDCPA in doing so. There is no Morton's Fork involved, and therefore little likelihood that the state law is conflict preempted under the Supremacy Clause (U.S. Const. art. VI, cl 2.) (click here for more information on these doctrines, in the context of the Arizona immigration law).

That being said, one can understand why an association would want to exercise its rights under this provision. In order to determine if it's possible to do that without violating the FDCPA, let's look at the relevant Federal provision. 15 U.S.C.A. § 1692c(b) provides:

"Except as provided in section 1692b of this title [to ascertain the debtor's location information], without the prior consent of the consumer given directly to the debt collector, or the express permission of a court of competent jurisdiction, or as reasonably necessary to effectuate a postjudgment judicial remedy, a debt collector may not communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than the consumer, his attorney, a consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by law, the creditor, the attorney of the creditor, or the attorney of the debt collector."

For this provision to apply, the communication must concern a debt, it must come from a debt collector, and the communication must not fall within an exception to the provision. Whether these criteria will be met will depend on the facts of each specific case.

Is the communication in connection with the collection of a "debt"?

The FDCPA defines debt as "any obligation or alleged obligation of a consumer to pay money arising out of a transaction in which the money, property, insurance, or services which are the subject of the transaction are primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, whether or not such obligation has been reduced to judgment." 15 U.S.C.A. § 1692a(5). Association dues and assessments are usually considered debts under the FDCPA, but fines assessed by the association for violation of association rules are not. Durso v. Summer Brook Preserve Homeowner's Ass'n, 641 F.Supp. 2d 1256 (M.D. Fla. 2008). The Florida law at issue provides that the tenant may be required to pay rent to the association if the owner is delinquent on "any monetary obligation due to the association." Presumably, this would include both dues and fines.

Is the party attempting to collect the amount owed to the association a "debt collector"?

The FDCPA defines "debt collector" as "any person who uses any instrumentality of interstate commerce or the mails in any business the principal purpose of which is the collection of any debts, or who regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another. Notwithstanding the exclusion provided by clause (F) of the last sentence of this paragraph, the term includes any creditor who, in the process of collecting his own debts, uses any name other than his own which would indicate that a third person is collecting or attempting to collect such debts. For the purpose of section 1692f(6) of this title, such term also includes any person who uses any instrumentality of interstate commerce or the mails in any business the principal purpose of which is the enforcement of security interests."

Under this definition, the association itself would not be subject to the FDCPA (unless it uses another name in collecting the debt), since it is a creditor in this scenario, not a debt collector. See generally Madura v. Lakebridge Condominium Association, Inc., 2010 WL 2354140 (11th Cir. 2010). But a management company probably is (see Id.), and a collection agency and an attorney definitely are.

Does the Florida Condominium Act's amendment fall under any exception to § 1692c(b)?

Even if the communication concerns a debt and emanates from a debt collector, the communication will not violate the FDCPA if it falls under one of the exceptions to § 1692c(b). According to its terms, § 1692c(b) does not apply to communications (1) made with the prior consent given directly to the debt collector, (2) made with the express permission of a court of competent jurisdiction, or (3) as reasonably necessary to effectuate a postjudgment judicial remedy. It is likely that the first exception will not be met with respect to existing unit owners, although it should urge all associations to place a written consent into the documents prospective owners must sign in order to avoid liability in the future. It is also likely that the second exception is not met, unless the notice is being sent in litigation and upon the court's order. The third exception does not appear to have any application to the Florida Statute at all.

Additionally, the FTC staff commentary to the FDCPA provides that "an attorney may communicate with a potential witness in connection with a lawsuit he has filed (e.g., in order to establish the existence of a debt), because the section was not intended to prohibit communications by attorneys that are necessary to conduct lawsuits on behalf of their clients." It is not clear where this came from, or if a court would consider this a valid exception (FTC commentary is not binding on the judiciary). However, parallels can be drawn between the need to contact witnesses for the purposes of litigation and the need to contact tenants for the purposes of the Condominium Act amendment. Both involve remedies that need not be elected- just as the Act's amendments provide that the association "may" notify the tenant, in principal a creditor need not elect to file a lawsuit and seek judicial remedy. So if an exception is going to be made to allow the creditor to elect one legal remedy- a lawsuit, why not make an exception to allow the creditor to elect another legal remedy- charging past due amounts to the tenant?

Conclusion

The issue of whether electing remedy under the amendments to the Condominium Act will subject an association or its agent to FDCPA liability has not been litigated. It is likely that this issue will be addresses by a court of competent jurisdiction at some point however, given the state of the economy and of Florida real property in general. Associations should prepare for this battle by amending their association documents to provide for the unit owner's consent to elect the remedy provided in the Condominium Act's amendments, and by being prepared to establish the existence of an exception to § 1692c(b)'s application in the specific circumstances.