From The Top In Brief - August 2019

On June 3, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Taggart v. Lorenzen, 139 S. Ct. 1795 (2019), that a bankruptcy court may hold a creditor in civil contempt for attempting to collect on a debt that has been discharged in bankruptcy "if there is no fair ground of doubt as to whether the [discharge] order barred the creditor's conduct." In so ruling, the Court vacated and remanded a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejecting a "strict liability" standard and applying a subjective standard under which a creditor may not be held in civil contempt if it has a "good faith belief" that the discharge order does not bar collection, even if that belief is unreasonable.