Summary:

The Court of Appeals largely affirmed a substantial judgment against a storage operator that:

• Took and held a debtor’s property for over three years

• Moved it multiple times

• Refused return unless the owner signed a liability release

Result:

• Conversion, trespass to chattels, and UDTPA → affirmed

Summary:

What Judge Edwards has done in the DBMP decision—and what In re Wolbert foreshadowed years earlier—is to remind us that attorney-client privilege in bankruptcy is not a static shield. It is a conditional protection, one that can erode—sometimes quickly—once the debtor crosses the line from considering bankruptcy to committing to it.

And that line matters.

Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6378922

Available at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/lawreview/vol99/iss3/7/

Abstract:

Summary:

The Fourth Circuit recently issued a published opinion in Dale v. Peoples Bank Corp. addressing a question that arises whenever creditors pursue bank accounts to satisfy a judgment: can a bank be sued for conversion when it turns over funds pursuant to state judgment-enforcement procedures? The court’s answer was a clear no.