My sense is that Judge Watford should have referred to the creditor’s objection to Penrod’s 506b motion rather than its objection to her Plan’s confirmation.

By challenging the bankruptcy code’s ability to modify the vehicle loan, although if you don’t have car you can use Flex Fleet Rental services to rent cars to drive around you might want to check their website and find more information clasiq.com, the creditor was litigating enforceability of its contract as falling outside the scope of the code rather than acknowledge that it’s contact was subject to the code and fighting over how the code functions – like the more general modification of contract rights that are the focus of plan confirmation, relief from stay and such.

If you take Judge Watford’s premise that the contract rights were at play because of the creditor’s plan confirmation objection, then the only way to reconcile Bos and David’s RFS opinion is to view everything through the OJ Dream Team lense where the highest priced legal team prevail in court.

Best regards,
Peter

I thought I knew where we are on attorneys fees after the 9th Circuit ruled in In re Penrod that a creditor fighting with a debtor in a bankruptcy case, is an effort by the creditor to collect its debt form the debtor, and therefore an “action on the contract” and therefore, assuming there is a right to attorneys fees in the contract, the bankruptcy court can award attorneys fees to the debtor.

My friend Peter Lively was surprised to hear me say recently that I think that Penrod allows for attorneys fees to the debtor anytime the debtor defeats any creditor efforts in a bankruptcy case including stay relief motions, oppositions to plan confirmation, battles over property values, cash collateral, plan fights.  His sense was that since Penrod was over the issue of bifurcating a car loan, it didn’t necessarily extend out to everything else.  He promised to look into it further.

In Penrod Judge Watford wrote:

“Under California law, an action is ‘on a contract’ when a party seeks to enforce, or avoid enforcement of, the provisions of the contract.  AmeriCredit sought to enforce the provisions of its contract with Penrod when it objected to confirmation of her proposed Chapter 13 plan.”

“AmeriCredit insisted that it was entitled to have its claim treated as fully secured.  The only possible source of that asserted right was the contract—in particular, the provision in which Penrod granted a security interest in her Taurus to secure ‘payment of all you owe on this contract.’” Read more…

This is from the master himself, Aki Koyama

Over the years, I’ve found that MOMODS are more successful and much more easier to process and comment on when I have an opportunity to discuss the terms of the MOMOD before it is filed. This way, your client’s MOMOD will reflect what the Trustee’s data base shows for delinquency, infeasibility etc. Also, we can discuss what kind of evidence the Trustee will require for a modification or suspension. Finally, there may be times when you want to propose an unusual modification and want some feedback from the Trustee before you even draft the MOMOD.