Equal Justice?
Feb. 10th, 2016 12:19 pmAn interesting study:
Randomly Distributed Trial Court Justice: A Case Study and Siren from the Consumer Bankruptcy World
Gary Neustadter
Santa Clara University - School of Law
January 25, 2016
Abstract:
Between February 24, 2010 and April 23, 2012, Heritage Pacific Financial, L.L.C. (“Heritage”), a debt buyer, mass produced and filed 218 essentially identical adversary proceedings in California bankruptcy courts against makers of promissory notes who had filed Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy petitions. Each complaint alleged Heritage’s acquisition of the notes in the secondary market and alleged the outstanding obligations on the notes to be nondischargeable under the Bankruptcy Code’s fraud exception to the bankruptcy discharge. [...]
The results in the Heritage adversary proceedings evidence a stunning and unacceptable level of randomly distributed justice at the trial court level, generated as much by the idiosyncratic behaviors of judges, lawyers, and parties as by even handed application of law.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2722054
Randomly Distributed Trial Court Justice: A Case Study and Siren from the Consumer Bankruptcy World
Gary Neustadter
Santa Clara University - School of Law
January 25, 2016
Abstract:
Between February 24, 2010 and April 23, 2012, Heritage Pacific Financial, L.L.C. (“Heritage”), a debt buyer, mass produced and filed 218 essentially identical adversary proceedings in California bankruptcy courts against makers of promissory notes who had filed Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy petitions. Each complaint alleged Heritage’s acquisition of the notes in the secondary market and alleged the outstanding obligations on the notes to be nondischargeable under the Bankruptcy Code’s fraud exception to the bankruptcy discharge. [...]
The results in the Heritage adversary proceedings evidence a stunning and unacceptable level of randomly distributed justice at the trial court level, generated as much by the idiosyncratic behaviors of judges, lawyers, and parties as by even handed application of law.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2722054