The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has turned away an appeal of a $28.1 million dollar judgment awarded to 6 plaintiffs (commonly referred to as the Beatrice Six) for damages imposed by a federal jury for a reckless investigation and manufacturing false evidence orchestrated by the Gage County Sheriff’s department. The plaintiffs spent two decades
Money is a complicated topic. It is often very obvious what a person must do to improve their financial situation, but getting someone to change their financial habits and attitudes is hard. Good financial advice seems to go in one ear and out the other as clients continue to repeat the same destructive patterns over
Nebraska becomes the first bankruptcy court in the nation to allow debtors to sign bankruptcy petitions digitally.
An amendment to Nebraska Rule of Bankruptcy Procedulre 9011-1 became effective February 5 allowing attorney to use services like DocuSign and SignEasy to obtain client signatures on official court pleadings.
The immediate reaction? One central Nebraska attorney emailed
Before a person can file bankruptcy they must take an approved credit counseling class and their attorney must file a Certificate proving the class was taken with the court. The idea is to make sure that consumers are being educated about alternatives to bankruptcy, and when this new requirement was introduced in 2005 there was
I meet lots of people who desperately need to file bankruptcy, but they lack the money to file. A typical Chapter 7 case costs $1,300, and paying the fee is probably the biggest stumbling block to filing a case.
A company called BK Billing provides an answer: borrow the money. Under the BK Billing model,
Bankruptcy courts across the country have embraced the electronic filing of court pleadings since 2001. This system, known as Electronic Case Files or “ECF”, allows attorneys to sign and file documents with an electronic signature instead of using “wet ink” signatures on paper. The system is a great improvement over the older paper file
Most collection lawsuits result in judgments obtained by default. A Default Judgment is awarded when the defendant fails to file a written response to the lawsuit within the required time period, typically 30 days. Over 90% of collection lawsuits filed in Nebraska result in a default judgment.
The concept of allowing default judgments seems fair
I belong to the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA), the only national organization devoted exclusively to serving consumer bankruptcy attorneys and their clients. The NACBA has over 4,000 members located in all 50 states.
The NACBA is a resource I use every day in my practice. Their website is filled with
The writing is on the wall and your company must close. Despite throwing everything you had into making the business successful, it’s not working. The funding is depleted. You have drained all your personal resources, emptied the retirement nest egg, mortgaged the home and you are out of cash. You have talked to all the
The Eight Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (8th BAP) affirmed the discharge of a $27,000 of federal student loan debt despite the fact that the debtor, Sara Fern, was eligible to pay nothing in an Income Based Repayment (IBR) plan. See In re Fern.
The debtor is a 35 year old single mom of