In a split decision, the Indiana Court of Appeals recently affirmed a trial courts’ decision to revoke a tax deed. In David L. Jenner and Vickie Jenner v. Bloomington Cellular Services, Inc. and Crown Castle South LLC, the majority of the Court determined that because the tax sale purchasers failed to notify interest holders outside the chain of title, they did not comply with the Indiana tax-sale statute, and were therefore not entitled to a tax deed for the property.

Although a Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharge eliminates personal liability for a mortgage loan, a discharge does not erase the debt or the mortgage lien. This means that borrowers will not be on the hook for the money, but lenders still can sue to foreclose the mortgage. Discharged debtors still can lose their property.

Why file a bankruptcy case here instead of there? An entity, and moreso a group of entities, may be legally permitted to file for bankruptcy in any one of a number of judicial districts – also referred to as venues. A prospective debtor should carefully consider where to file its bankruptcy petition. Courts in different venues do not uniformly interpret all provisions of the Bankruptcy Code and its procedural rules.

On January 8, 2018 Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced a bipartisan bankruptcy venue reform bill as S. 2282 entitled the Bankruptcy Venue Reform Act of 2018 to rebalance where commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases are commenced. The proposed law eliminates the place of incorporation in favor of filing where the debtor's principal place of business or principal assets are located. It will also eliminate the affiliate-filing loophole.

In the months ahead, the court community will be upgrading its Case Management/Electronic Case Filing System (CM/ECF) to the Next Generation of CM/ECF (NextGen). This upgrade will provide users with several benefits including Central Sign-on: the ability for e-filing attorneys to access any NextGen court they practice within using one login and password.

The Court has posted a notice of process changes taking effect February 5th, particularly as to use of filing instead of certificate date for calculation of deadlines and quality control for statement of consent.

Thousands of students nationwide who attended the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute would have nearly $600 million in loans canceled under a proposed court settlement, a significant win for consumers in Massachusetts and elsewhere who have long claimed that the for-profit chain defrauded them out of money and an education.

Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “ESI” encompasses all documents, recordings, images, and data compilations regardless of where the information is stored. Given this broad definition, and with the advent of data retention policies in an efficiency-driven world, the recently-revised Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) provides a cautionary tale to attorneys and litigants alike: be wary of deletion.

As the year comes to a close and the holidays approach, mall owners are talking redevelopments, and particularly those of vacated Sears stores.

The timely discussion has been a reoccurring theme on many third-quarter retail real estate investment trust, or REIT, conference calls. Analysts and investors want to know: "What are you going to do with that big box?"

This section of the Indianapolis Bar Association is in the process of selecting its Executive Committee members for 2018. We currently have an active Executive Committee, which meets monthly in order to plan and execute social events, educational programming and community service initiatives.