Danning Gill attorney, Aaron E. de Leest, prevails in the Ninth Circuit in a published decision on an issue important to Danning Gill’s trustee and debtor clients. In its decision, the Ninth Circuit held that the doctrines of issue preclusion and claim preclusion can be applied to deny a debtor’s amended claims of exemption. The Ninth Circuit went on to add that:
“[t]o hold otherwise would not only undermine the finality of exemption orders, but would considerably frustrate the trustee’s duty to expeditiously close the debtor’s estate. Debtors can amend their exemptions as a matter of course, Fed. R. Bankr. P. 1009(a), so if orders denying exemptions carry no preclusive weight, debtors could delay matters by claiming the same property as exempt time and time again. Debtors could also decline to meaningfully press their claims, and creditors would bear the brunt of such behavior, as the relitigation of resolved issues would drain estate—not to mention judicial—resources. Those burdens are precisely what the preclusion doctrines were designed to avoid, and they remain available to the bankruptcy courts when ruling on previously denied claims” (internal case citations omitted).
A link to the Ninth Circuit’s decision is here: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/06/10/20-60006.pdf