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.
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.
