Court Opinion

ID: 9640657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:11:15.623981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:31.622368
License: Public Domain

MORTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I entirely concur in the result. But the views expressed in the opinion, that the amendment of 1933 to the Bankruptcy Act (31 USCA § 201 et seq.) enlarged the basic jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court over proceedings in other courts, seems to me unsound. I do not think that the careful provisions on this point contained in section 74 (in), 11 USCA § 292 (m), were intended to bo modified by subsections (h) and (n), 11 USCA § 292¡ (h, n), whieh appear to me to be administrative rather than jurisdictional in their purpose and scope. Section 74 is, I think, to be read in connection with section 11 of the original act (11 USCA § 29) and with the established law on this delicate and important point, the result of long and careful development, which is fully staled in Straton v. New, 283 U. S. 318, 51 S. Ct. 465, 75 L. Ed. 1069. In view of subdivision (m), it cannot I think have been the intention, as it is, in effect, said to be in the majority opinion, that under subdivision (n) any proceed*608ing in which the debtor’s property was, or was claimed to be, involved eonld be stayed by the bankruptcy court, regardless of how long the proceeding had been pending and of the stage, which it had reached, provided only that the property in question was still in the debtor’s possession. The reasons which call for a limitation on the backward reach of bankruptcy proceedings in section 67f, 11 USCA § 107 (f), apply with equal force to relief proceedings under section 74 (11 USCA § 202). If a debtor desires to avail himself of its provisions as a protection against action by secured creditors, he should do so within the four months’ period and before jurisdiction has. been obtained and rights determined in other courts. Subdivisions (h) and (n), 11 -USCA § 202 (h and n), are to be read in connection with all the rest of the act. I think they are intended to put on a firm footing power which courts of bankruptcy had occasionally exercised to hold back secured creditors from foreclosing on their security until the general creditors or the estate were sufficiently represented to be able to protect their interest. Whether section 74 be given the broader construction of the majority opinion or the narrower one which seems to me to be correct, the result 'in the present case is the same.