Aoki v. Jones (In re Paradise Palms Vacation Club)

41 B.R. 916, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14844
CourtDistrict Court, D. Hawaii
DecidedJuly 18, 1984
DocketCiv. Nos. 82-0615, 82-0616
StatusPublished

This text of 41 B.R. 916 (Aoki v. Jones (In re Paradise Palms Vacation Club)) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Hawaii primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Aoki v. Jones (In re Paradise Palms Vacation Club), 41 B.R. 916, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14844 (D. Haw. 1984).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

FACTS

MARTIN PENCE, Senior District Judge.

This appeal arises in the context of two bankruptcy proceedings which are factually almost identical but which have not been formally consolidated. The cases will be treated together for the purpose of this appeal. The debtors, Paradise Palms Vacation Club and WPMK Corporation, are related companies which were engaged in a vacation time-sharing enterprise. Paradise Palms Vacation Club was a non-profit corporation that purchasers into the time-sharing plan joined as members, and WPMK was the developer and conducted sales of the club memberships.

In February of 1981, before the bankruptcy proceedings began, a Washington-based time-share operation called Harbor Village Club merged into Paradise Palms Vacation Club. As the surviving entity, Paradise Palms succeeded to all of Harbor Village Club’s rights and obligations. The major obligation, of course, was to provide time-share services and accommodations to Harbor Village Club members.

Before Harbor Village Club merged into Paradise Palms, it had sold time-share memberships on an instalment payment basis and had received promissory notes. Harbor Village Club was required to follow Washington law with regard to these notes. Specifically, it was governed by the Washington Retail Instalment Sales Act, including Chapter 63.14 of the Revised Code of Washington.1 Section 63.14.020 [918]*918required Harbor Village Club to provide the buyers of its time-share interests with a single document containing the entire agreement, including any promissory notes or other evidence of indebtedness between the parties. Section 63.14.020 further required Harbor Village Club to include on that document a statement that assignment or negotiation of the note to a third party did not cut off any defenses or rights of action the buyer might have against the original seller. The Harbor Village Club notes did not include this statement.

This appeal stems from what happened to four of those Harbor Village Club notes. The four notes are now held by the appel-lee here, Jocelyn Jones. The makers of the four notes in question are Eades, Kincaid, Fields, and Davis. Before the merger, Harbor Village Club sold these four notes, among others, to Alpha-Omega, Inc. The endorsement was with recourse. Alpha-Omega then sold the Eades and Kincaid notes through its broker, Capital Mortgage and Finance Corporation, to appellee Jones. The endorsement to Jones was without recourse. For reasons unimportant to this appeal, Alpha-Omega negotiated the Fields and Davis notes without recourse first to the broker, Capital Mortgage, which later negotiated them and endorsed them without recourse to Jones.

Jones had bought the right to collect the payments made on the Harbor Village Club notes. The services that the makers of the notes paid for, however, were to be provided by Paradise Palms Vacation Club as Harbor Village Club’s successor, not by Jones. When Paradise Palms went into bankruptcy, it became unable to provide the services that the buyers were paying for. To remedy this problem, the WPMK and Paradise Palms Trustees proposed a Plan of Reorganization that provided, inter alia, for the cancellation of instalment sales contracts by which individual buyers gave promissory notes to purchase timeshare services from either Harbor Village Club or Paradise Palms Vacation Club. Because most of the makers of the notes under these contracts were still making payments to Paradise Palms and WPMK, not to third parties like Jones, the anticipated effect of the cancellation was simply that Paradise Palms members would be able to stop paying Paradise Palms for services that they were no longer receiving.

On June 26, 1982, at the hearing on confirmation of the proposed Plan, Jones objected to the cancellation of her four notes. Jones made several objections, but the one important to this appeal is her argument that she is a holder in due course of the four notes and that therefore the makers of the notes cannot assert against her their defenses against the original payee.2 Upon hearing this objection, the Bankruptcy Judge requested additional memoranda from counsel on the holder in due course issue. A hearing was held on July 9, 1982, during which no evidence was presented and no factual determinations were made. On August 6, 1982, the Bankruptcy Court entered an Order Sustaining Objection of Jocelyn Jones and exempting [919]*919her from the Plan (which was, in all other respects, confirmed).

The Trustees filed a Motion for Reconsideration on August 12, 1982. Jones filed a memorandum in opposition. On September 1, 1982, the Bankruptcy Judge entered an order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Trustees’ Motion for Reconsideration. It is that order that is now on appeal. The relevant language is included in Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the Order. Paragraph 4 provides as follows:

4. In order to preserve his rights and defenses under Chapter 63.14, a maker must comply with the requirements of said Chapter. Section 63.14.020 provides that “[any] such promissory note ... shall not, when assigned or negotiated, cut off as to third parties any right of action or defense which the buyer may have against the seller, and each such promissory note ... shall contain a statement to that effect ....”
In the instant case, the makers of the note had failed to insert in the promissory notes the statement required by Section 63.14.020 to alert a third-party purchaser of the preservation of the original rights and defenses of the maker. Thus, said makers do not come within the protection of Section 63.14.020 and a bona fide purchaser for value of such notes may cut off the rights and defenses which the maker may have against the original payee.

Paragraph 6 of the Order directs that

Since the notes purchased by Jones did not contain the statements required by Section 63.14.020 to preserve the makers’ defenses and rights against a third party, unless the makers can prove otherwise, Jones has all the privileges and rights of a holder in due course.

The issue on appeal is whether the Bankruptcy Judge erred in holding that Washington law allows Jones to be a holder in due course. Appellants, trustees for Paradise Palms and WPMK, urge that, as a matter of Washington law, Jones cannot be a holder in due course, even though the notes were missing the required legend. The Bankruptcy Judge, they argue, therefore erred in holding that Jones should be afforded protection as a holder in due course. Appellants further argue that because Jones is not a holder in due course the Trustees’ Plan should be applied to her, even over her objection, because without holder in due course status the Plan does not adversely affect her. This would follow from the test relevant to confirmation of reorganization plans in Chapter 11, laid out in 11 U.S.C. § 1129(a)(7)(A), namely whether the objecting creditor will receive as much under the plan as she would have if the debtor were liquidated under Chapter 7 of the Code. Appellants point out that in a liquidation, Jones would receive nothing because the makers have a complete defense against Paradise Palms, surviving entity of the original payee of the note: because of the bankruptcy and liquidation, there is a failure of consideration and the makers are not obligated to perform further.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
41 B.R. 916, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14844, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/aoki-v-jones-in-re-paradise-palms-vacation-club-hid-1984.