In Re Windsor Communications Group, Inc.

67 B.R. 692
CourtUnited States Bankruptcy Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedDecember 4, 1986
Docket19-00007
StatusPublished
Cited by45 cases

This text of 67 B.R. 692 (In Re Windsor Communications Group, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Bankruptcy Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In Re Windsor Communications Group, Inc., 67 B.R. 692 (Pa. 1986).

Opinion

*693 OPINION

DAVID A. SCHOLL, Bankruptcy Judge.

On September 2, 1986, the second day on the bench, we were presented with seven (7) adversarial proceedings in which the Debtor in the above-entitled case was seeking to collect various accounts receivable. We were later advised that these cases were the tail-end of a series of more than seventeen hundred (1,700) such adversarial proceedings instituted by this Debtor alone since the bankruptcy filing in this case as an involuntary Chapter 7 case on August 5, 1982, and its conversion to Chapter 11 on August 25, 1982.

The following day, September 3, 1986, among the matters before us were twenty (20) accounts receivable adversarial proceedings filed by the Counsel for the Trustee in the case of Pinto Trucking Service, Inc., Bankruptcy No. 85-04573K.

The number of accounts receivable proceedings before us has continued to flow since these beginnings. In the majority of these cases, the Defendants failed to respond, and the Debtor-Plaintiffs have sought default judgments. Nevertheless, we were unable to decide exactly how to handle these matters, because we were aware that the pertinent provisions of the Bankruptcy Amendments and Federal Judgeship Act of 1984, P.L. 98-353 (BAF-JA), codified at 28 U.S.C. § 157, were vari-Dusly interpreted by not only this Court, but by courts across the country, in classifying these apparently garden-variety accounts receivable proceedings as either ‘core” or “noncore” proceedings. The Code dictates that a determination as to whether any proceedings before it are core >r noncore is to be made by a bankruptcy court “on the judge’s own motion or on ;imely motion of a party,” 28 U.S.C. 5 157(b)(3), presumably at an early stage in be proceedings. Thus, we are constrained ;o reach a conclusion on the issue forthwith.

The significance of this determination loes not affect the issue of whether we, as i bankruptcy court, can hear the case. Rather, at issue is whether we can “hear and determine” the matter, per 11 U.S.C. § 157(b)(1), or are required to hear it and then “submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to the district court,” which has exclusive power to enter a final order in a noncore matter. 28 U.S.C. § 157(c)(1). The core-noncore determination was, then, critical in arriving at the procedure to be utilized in deciding these matters.

We must confess, moreover, that our view as to the proper procedure was colored by our observation that a large percentage of these cases result in defaults, and that not only the labor of producing findings of fact and conclusions of law, but the seemingly empty formality of submitting an uncontested matter to the district court for a final order struck us as the height of wastefulness of the time of both our Court and the District Court. Thus, our initial reaction was to reach a determination that these matters were core proceedings if such a result could possibly be squared with BAFJA.

In order to assist our determination, we asked Counsel for the Debtor in this case and Counsel for the Trustee in Pinto Trucking to submit Briefs on this issue. Somewhat to our surprise and chagrin, Counsel for the Trustee for Pinto Trucking ultimately declined our invitation, stating that he believed that such proceedings were noncore. Windsor’s Counsel submitted a Brief concluding that, while Counsel believed that actions brought exclusively to recover tangible property and proceedings in which actions to recover tangible property were mixed with proceedings to collect accounts receivable were core proceedings, garden-variety accounts receivable proceedings were noncore.

These views of creditors’ attorneys have caused us to rethink our initial reaction. Nevertheless, for perhaps more sophisticated reasons than our initial, purely pragmatic considerations, or, perhaps more accurately stated, because none of the more sophisticated arguments outweigh the accurate common sense of our initial *694 reactions, we continue to believe that such garden-variety accounts receivable actions can and should be determined to be core proceedings. We shall therefore so treat all such matters before us which have not yet proceeded to final judgment as core proceedings, and shall proceed to so “determine” such cases, per 28 U.S.C. § 157(b)(8), in the future.

The underlying reason for the divergence of results in this area is the loose draftsmanship of 28 U.S.C. § 157(b)(2), which, in defining what is and is not a core proceeding, states as follows:

(2) Core proceedings include, but are not limited to—
(A) matters concerning the administration of the estate;
(B) allowance or disallowance of claims against the estate or exemptions from property of the estate, and estimation of claims or interest for the purposes of confirming a plan under chapter 11 or 13 of title 11 but not the liquidation or estimation of contingent or unliqui-dated personal injury tort or wrongful death claims against the estate for purposes of distribution in a case under title 11;
(C) counterclaims by the estate against persons filing claims against the estate;
(D) orders in respect to obtaining credit;
(E) orders to turn over property of the estate;
(F) proceedings to determine, avoid, or recover preferences;
(G) motions to terminate, annul or modify the automatic stay;
(H) proceedings to determine, avoid, or recover fraudulent conveyances;
(I) determinations as to the discharge-ability of particular debts;
(J) objections to discharges;
(K) determinations of the validity, extent, or priority of liens;
(L) confirmations of plans;
(M) orders approving the use or lease of property, including the use of each collateral;
(N) orders approving the sale of property other than property resulting from claims brought by the estate against persons who have not filed claims against the estate; and
(O) other proceedings affecting the liquidation of the assets of the estate or the adjustment of the debtor-creditor or the equity security holder relationship, except personal injury tort or wrongful death claims.

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Bluebook (online)
67 B.R. 692, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-windsor-communications-group-inc-paeb-1986.