The debtor filed a Chapter 13 case after the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) amended an existing state court environmental enforcement action to add him personally as a defendant. The State alleged that wastewater from a soil remediation facility operated by Carolina Composting Solutions, LLC had repeatedly polluted nearby waters and sought only injunctive relief requiring the defendants to stop the discharges, remediate the environmental damage, and comply with applicable environmental laws and permits.
The Fourth Circuit's published decision in Bayramov v. American Credit Acceptance is much more than another case about shareholder standing. It is one of the clearest explanations I have ever read of what Judge Julius N. Richardson calls the "claims ownership principle"āthe doctrine that determines who actually owns a cause of action when a business has been injured. This opinion deserves a place in law school casebooks.
The bankruptcy court denied summary judgment to both the debtor and MOHELA/Navient in a closely watched dispute over whether a private student loan qualifies as a "qualified education loan" under Ā§ 523(a)(8)(B). The court held that genuine issues of material fact remain regarding whether the loan exceeded the debtor's actual cost of attendance, an issue that could determine whether the debt was ever excepted from discharge in the first place.
This is the third and final pirate-themed case I've written about this week. I'll admit this one has the weakest connection. Unlike the Black Pearl and Blackbeard cases, there are no pirates in the opinion itself. Instead, the link is geographic: Bristol, England was the departure point for the voyage in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Sometimes that's enough of an excuse to end a pirate trilogy.
This is the second of three pirate-themed cases I'll be blogging about this week. After beginning with Black Pearl Vision v. G & G Funding, we now turn to Blackbeard's Triple Play. It seems that even the pirates are making appearances in the bankruptcy courts this summer.
Before getting to today's opinion, a brief programming note. Because the debtor in this case is Black Pearl Vision, I couldn't resist the obvious association with the legendary Black Pearl from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. So, with apologies to Captain Jack Sparrow, this is the first of three pirate-themed bankruptcy posts I'll be publishing this week.
