Summary:

In a trio of unpublished but significant decisions, the North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed arbitration awards against TitleMax arising from high-interest cross-border vehicle title loans made to North Carolina residents. The primary decision, Frazier v. TitleMax of Virginia, Inc., was accompanied by the companion cases of Jefferies v. TitleMax of South Carolina, Inc. and Hood v.

Summary:

In one of the more consequential procedural rulings yet arising from the ongoing DBMP LLC “Texas Two-Step” bankruptcy, Judge Ashley Austin Edwards granted a stay pending appeal of her earlier privilege-waiver decision that had ordered disclosure of hundreds of allegedly privileged documents in the sprawling asbestos litigation surrounding DBMP and related entities.

Summary:

In Frew v. EMortgage Funding LLC, the Eastern District of North Carolina dismissed a pro se homeowner’s broad challenge to a residential foreclosure proceeding, rejecting claims under TILA, RESPA, FDCPA, RICO, and North Carolina consumer protection law.

Available at:  https://www.ablj.org/the-strong-arm-power-on-steroids-expanding-non-avoidance-trustee-claims-under-%C2%A7-544a1-vol-100-issue-1-html/

Introduction:

Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6475198 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6475198

Summary: 

This is one of those articles that forces practitioners to stop, re-read the data, and ask whether what we think is happening in bankruptcy court is actually happening.

Professor Jason Iuliano examines more than 1,300 student loan adversary proceedings over a sixteen-year period and finds a striking—and recent—shift: women now outperform men in obtaining student loan discharges, particularly in the post-2022 DOJ/Department of Education guidance era.

Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6497639 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6497639

SummaryIn Allianz v. BLV Ascend, the North Carolina Business Court (Chief Judge Michael Robinson) delivers a clean, practical ruling on a somewhat over-lawyered problem: whether a plaintiff needs court permission to dismiss a guaranty claim—and whether doing so might jeopardize an already-in-place receivership.

The short answer: no and no.

Summary:

In Smith Debnam Narron Drake Saintsing & Myers, LLP v. Muntjan, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and held that a series of informal emails satisfied the statute of frauds for a guaranty of another’s debt.