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Former state senator files bankruptcy in effort to get out of jail for child support non-payment

Jeremy Hutchinson on Friday, his second day in jail, filed for voluntary bankruptcy and appealed the contempt order that incarcerates him indefinitely to the Arkansas Supreme Court, measures that should get him out of jail within a week at most without having to pay $524,000 in child support arrears for his freedom, his lawyer said Friday.

Clinton Lancaster, the Benton lawyer who brought a successful paternity action in Independence County against presidential son Hunter Biden, took on Hutchinson’s case Friday. Lancaster said Hutchinson’s Chapter 13 bankruptcy declaration carries a federal stay of the state-court divorce proceedings that landed Hutchinson in jail on Thursday.

“You can’t put people in jail for their debts once they file for bankruptcy … so [release] is a matter of time,” Lancaster said, describing Hutchinson’s incarceration as “debtor’s prison.”https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/dec/31/former-state-senator-files-bankruptcy-in-effort/”We want to make it clear that Jeremy is not running from having to pay his debts. He has incurred a lot of judgments and things of that nature and he just needs relief.”

Bankruptcy will allow Hutchinson, 48, to discharge some portions of the divorce-related debt ascribed to him by the court, but not what he owes in child support and not whatever financial penalties he incurs

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January 5, 2023 by ATTORNEY

Bankruptcy judge denies Chris Pettit’s bid to get out of jail

SAN ANTONIO — Christopher “Chris” Pettit will remain in jail after a bankruptcy court judge ruled Wednesday that the disgraced former lawyer had not done enough to clear himself of a contempt of court charge.

Telling Pettit he holds the keys to his jail cell, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Gargotta set 17 conditions the ex-attorney must satisfy to be released. First on the list is that Pettit turn over a business laptop to the trustee administering the bankruptcy estate. Pettit has given conflicting accounts regarding its whereabouts.

“It would really move things along if Mr. Pettit would come clean about what happened with regard to the laptop, good or bad, so we could move on in this case,” Gargotta said. The laptop purportedly contains information the trustee wants regarding Pettit’s clients and their funds.

“I’m not suggesting he say this, but if Mr. Pettit were to say, ‘I destroyed it’ … then if that really was the truth, then we would know … that as a result (the trustee and creditors are) not going to get that information,” the judge added. “Really, what’s at issue here is just saying where it is.”

On ExpressNews.com:

One of Chris Pettit’s largest

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November 13, 2022 by ATTORNEY

3M awaits bankruptcy ruling that could sink litigation tactic

3M’s attempt to block jury trials of more than 230,000 lawsuits accusing it of harming U.S. soldiers faces a key test this week in front of a federal judge in Indianapolis.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jeffrey Graham is set to consider a temporary halt to the lawsuits so that 3M and its bankrupt subsidiary, Aearo Technologies, can try to settle the claims, most of which have been filed by veterans who say the combat arms earplugs left them with hearing damage.

Graham’s decision will echo across the offices of other firms facing massive numbers of product liability lawsuits, Harvard Law School professor Jared Ellias said in an interview.

“To the extent 3M suffers a setback here it’s likely to set off alarm bells in other corporate boardrooms of companies that want to take advantage of the bankruptcy system,” Ellias said.

The Aearo case uses an increasingly popular strategy in which profitable companies use insolvency proceedings to force settlement talks with victims of allegedly harmful products.

Johnson & Johnson and lumber giant Georgia-Pacific have also put units into bankruptcy with the same goal of ending their litigation woes in one place instead of fighting thousands of trials around the country.

Fighting each

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August 26, 2022 by ATTORNEY

California invites court fight with gun law that mimics Texas on abortion

The governor has maintained the measure is about protecting Californians from gun violence. But it also sends a message to a Supreme Court whose rulings Newsom and fellow California Democrats have derided, essentially daring it to either uphold the gun law or reconsider its logic in backing Texas’s approach.

“The question is whether they are complete and abject hypocrites and frauds if they reject our bill that’s modeled after that abortion bill as it relates to private right of action to go after assault weapons,” Newsom said this month.

Yet the law could stand on precarious legal ground. Even Democratic legislators who favor gun restrictions said as much in passing the bill, conceding that it employed a dubious legal strategy in the service of a larger goal.

“It is my hope and desire that ultimately this bill actually not proceed because the Texas law is found to be wrong, unconstitutional and crazy,” state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) said before voting for the measure in April.

It also drew fierce opposition from ideological allies of Newsom who warned he was empowering the very type of reasoning he had condemned. “There is no way to ‘take advantage of the flawed logic’

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July 26, 2022 by LAW

Lawyer is disbarred after trying to run his law practice from jail
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Ethics

Lawyer is disbarred after trying to run his law practice from jail

By Debra Cassens Weiss

old jail cells

Image from Shutterstock.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has disbarred a lawyer who continued practicing law from jail after his conviction for shooting and injuring a man outside an Oklahoma City nightclub.

The state supreme court disbarred lawyer Jay Silvernail after rejecting a recommendation for a suspension of two years and one day.

The silvernail-shot-ryan-dejesus-outsi.html”Legal Profession Blog has highlights from the June 28 opinion.

Silvernail had tried to continue his law practice while he was in the county jail awaiting sentencing for the May 2016 shooting of Ryan Dejesus, who lost most of his right leg as a result of the gunshot wound.

Silvernail “was more interested in cash flow than client care,” the state supreme court said. And his decision to bring a loaded gun into a verbal dispute with Dejesus “gives us grave concerns about his fitness to practice law,” the Oklahoma Supreme Court added.

Silvernail was convicted of assault and battery with a deadly weapon in October 2019 for shooting Dejesus,

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July 13, 2022 by LAW
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