Opinion ID: 2997159
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Length of the delay and its impact on judicial

Text: proceedings Simmons’s proof of claim was only one day late, a fact which seems to support the grant of her Rule 9006(b) motion. However, the bankruptcy court not only considered this one-day delay, but also how long it took Simmons to get around to requesting judicial relief. A total of eighty-one days lapsed between the Original Bar Date and Simmons’s filing of her 9006(b) motion. Although Simmons could have easily ascertained whether her proof of claim made it from the Virgin Islands to the mainland United States on time by either including a self-addressed stamped envelope with her proof of claim (as the claim form encouraged claimants to do) or by making a follow-up phone call to Trumbull, she chose not to do so. In fact, Simmons didn’t realize that her filing was late until she received a notice from Kmart, fiftythree days after the Original Bar Date. Even more perplexing, Simmons waited an additional twenty-eight days to make her Rule 9006(b) motion. The bankruptcy court was well within its province to consider the total eighty-one day period of delay, as the court may consider “all relevant circumstances” in its excusable neglect analysis. Pioneer, 507 U.S. at 395. Simmons makes much of three late-filed administrative claims also involved in the Kmart Chapter 11 proceedings, with delays somewhat similar to Simmons’s, which the bank- 8 No. 03-4084 ruptcy court allowed. However, Simmons failed to include the court’s unpublished orders addressing these claims in her appendix to this court, and as such, we cannot verify the veracity of her argument. Cf., Le Beau v. Libby-OwensFord Co., 727 F.2d 141, 147 (7th Cir. 1984) (parties relying on an unpublished order included such in appendix); Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., 670 F.2d 760, 763 n.4 (7th Cir. 1982) (same). Hence, we do not address it further except to say that these claims are distinguishable from Simmons because, according to her own brief, the three administrative claimants’ Rule 9006(b) motions were not as tardy as Simmons’s (two filing seventy days after the bar date, and one forty-eight days later). Simmons also points to the fact that at the time of her Rule 9006(b) motion, the Supplemental Bar Date had not yet passed. But the due process concerns which necessitated the Supplemental Bar Date are not at all applicable to Simmons, see infra Part II.B. Regardless, bar orders serve an indisputably integral purpose in facilitating reorganizations. The Second Circuit put it well: A bar order serves the important purpose of enabling the parties to a bankruptcy case to identify with reasonable promptness the identity of those making claims against the bankruptcy estate and the general amount of the claims, a necessary step in achieving the goal of successful reorganization. . . . If individual creditors were permitted to postpone indefinitely the effect of a bar order so long as adversary proceedings were pending, the institutional means of ensuring the sound administration of the bankruptcy estate would be undermined. In re Hooker Invs., Inc., 937 F.2d 833, 840 (2d Cir. 1991). Therefore, we conclude that the bankruptcy court’s finding as to the length of delay and its concomitant negative impact on judicial proceedings was not clear error. No. 03-4084 9