Opinion ID: 174079
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Whether the Bankruptcy Court Must Dismiss the Cases

Text: Having concluded that no case had commenced and no automatic stay had been triggered in the cases of the three debtors here, the bankruptcy court chose as the appropriate method of disposing of the matters to exercise its equitable powers under 11 U.S.C. § 105(a) and strike the debtors' petitions. See In re Elmendorf, 345 B.R. at 503-05. The Trustee urges us to determine that the only proper method of disposing of the matter of a debtor ineligible under § 109(h) is dismissal. At this time, we need not, and do not, determine what actions the bankruptcy court may have taken on the petitions. Rather, we remand to the bankruptcy court for it to consider in the first instance the ramifications of our determination in the circumstances presented here that cases have commenced. The bankruptcy court's determination that its equitable powers included striking the petitions was premised on the belief that there were no cases to dismiss. While we note that we are unaware of any case similar to this one in which a court has determined that a case has commenced and yet taken an action other than dismissal, the bankruptcy court did not address whether other actions, including striking a petition, might be appropriate in these circumstances. We thus conclude that this is a question for the bankruptcy court to address initially. See In re Morgan, 182 F.3d 775, 780 (11th Cir.1999) (Since the applicability and use of § 105(a) is a decision that is typically left to the bankruptcy court, we leave the decision to the bankruptcy court in this case.).