10-15990-7 In re Martinsen

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Bankruptcy
Adversary petitions; timeliness

A creditor’s adversary petition filed after the deadline must be dismissed even though the trustee obtained an extension, and initially sought an extension for all interested parties.

“Perhaps it is theoretically possible for a creditor to rest upon the assurance that another party’s request will also inure to its benefit, and to argue later that equity dictates that its claims are timely pursuant to an extension it did not request. But unlike the situation in Meyer, there is no apparent unity between the plaintiff’s claims and those which might be asserted by the U.S. Trustee or the Chapter 7 Trustee. As the U.S. Trustee’s motion was filed on the deadline date itself, the plaintiff certainly had ample opportunity to act on its own. There is no indication that the plaintiff even received notice of the U.S. Trustee’s motion prior to the deadline (which suggests that it could not be certain anyone might seek an extension until the very last minute), and its own pleadings indicate that it did not expect to file an adversary proceeding. Further, even after it supposedly ‘learned’ of the possible fraud, the plaintiff did not join to defend the trustee’s broad extension request or respond to the debtor’s argument that the extension should not extend to all parties in interest.”

10-15990-7 In re Martinsen