Stephen Smith Home for the Aged, Inc. v. Mercy Douglass Center, Inc. (In Re Stephen Smith Home for the Aged, Inc.)

80 B.R. 678, 1987 WL 31516
District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania·Decided December 10, 1987·No. Misc. No. 87-0455, Bankruptcy 85-05124F, Adv. No. 86-0626F·Published·Cited by 19 cases

Opinion

ORDER

LUDWIG, District Judge.

AND NOW, this 8th day of December, 1987, after independent review of the recommendation and opinion in support thereof of United States Bankruptcy Judge Bruce Fox, it is ORDERED that:

1. The opinion is approved and adopted.

2. The motion to abstain is granted. The bankruptcy court will therefore not hear the debtor’s complaint for declaratory judgment and for accounting. 28 U.S.C. § 1334(c)(1). See In Re Corporacion de Servicios Medicos Hospitalarios, 805 F.2d 440, 442-43 (1st Cir.1986) (only district court has jurisdictional authority to issue abstention orders in non-core proceedings).

OPINION

September 14,1987.

BRUCE I. FOX, Bankruptcy Judge:

The debtor, Stephen Smith Home For the Aged, Inc., has initiated this adversary proceeding seeking: (1) a determination that it is the “rightful beneficiary” of various charitable bequests and (2) an accounting. Two defendants, supported by other defendants, have filed a motion requesting that I abstain, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1334(c)(1). The debtor and the committee of unsecured creditors oppose this motion. Because I believe that resolution of this matter would require interpretation of unsettled state probate law and would divest the Orphans’ Court Division of the Court of Common Pleas from exercising its statutorily granted discretion, I will recommend to the district court that the motion to abstain be granted.

I.

For purposes of this motion, the following facts are not in dispute.

The debtor is a not for profit corporation which had provided nursing home services to the elderly; it had been located in Philadelphia for many years. In 1985, its revenues consisted, in part, of various charitable bequests. These bequests are in the form of charitable trusts from which the debtor received a portion of the income. Among the decedents whose wills created these trusts were: Stephen Smith, Edward Parker, Elon Dunbar, Walter Beckett, Lydia Yarnall, Mary Dobbins, and Leandro De La Cuesta. Copies of these wills, some of which were probated almost one hundred years ago, were attached to the pleadings.

In December 1984, the debtor entered into an agreement with Mercy-Douglass Center (“Mercy-Douglass”) whereby the debtor agreed to sell “certain assets” to Mercy-Douglass. The agreement identified those assets as consisting of “all of the tangible assets and untangible assets ... owned by the seller ... and used in the operation of seller’s skilled nursing and intermediate care facilities and community activity program_” Among the specified assets were equipment, machinery, real estate and the debtor’s name. The agreement was completed and the debtor ceased operations on May 31, 1985.

On December 12,1985, the debtor filed a voluntary petition in bankruptcy under chapter 11. Its plan of reorganization, which has been approved by its creditors and this court, requires the debtor to distribute all funds derived from the liquidation of its assets in accordance with a distributional scheme established by the liq *681 uidating plan. 1 Because the December 1984 agreement made no express reference to debtor’s income from the charitable trusts, the debtor and Mercy-Douglass dispute the other’s entitlement to such income. In order to resolve this dispute, the debtor filed this adversary proceeding naming as defendants Mercy-Douglass, the various Philadelphia banks which are the trustees for these charitable trusts, and the Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. By agreement of the parties, the trustees have retained the income payments formerly made to the debtor pending the outcome of the dispute, thus necessitating the debtor’s request for an accounting.

Two of the trustees, First Pennsylvania Bank N.A. and Provident National Bank, have requested that I exercise my discretion and abstain because, in their view, to resolve this dispute requires that I interpret the various will provisions which established these charitable trusts. The debtor argues that this dispute requires only that I interpret the contract for the sale of assets and determine whether the debtor transferred its right to receive payments from the trusts. Mellon Bank argues that I have no “jurisdiction” to decide this dispute because state law grants to Orphans’ Court the sole authority to determine whether the debtor, Mercy-Douglass, or some other entity should receive the income from the trusts. The Attorney General has taken no position on this motion.

II.

Before turning to the merits of the motion to abstain, the debtor preliminarily argues that the movant banks are collaterally estopped from pressing this motion. The debtor asserts that, prior to the debtor’s bankruptcy filing, Mercy-Douglass had begun a state court action to resolve the entitlement question. After the bankruptcy was filed, Mercy-Douglass requested relief from the automatic stay, under 11 U.S.C. § 362(d)(1), to pursue the state court matter. The request was denied by opinion and order of former Chief Judge Goldhaber dated September 10, 1986. The court reasoned that the dispute between these two parties was one largely of contract which could be resolved easily by a bankruptcy court; thus, there was no “cause” to grant relief. From this ruling, debtor contends that all defendants are barred from requesting abstention, since the practical result of abstention is to permit a state court to resolve this matter — the very result previously sought.

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Stephen Smith Home for the Aged, Inc. v. Mercy Douglass Center, Inc. (In Re Stephen Smith Home for the Aged, Inc.), 80 B.R. 678, 1987 WL 31516 (E.D. Pa. 1987).

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