In re Miller, 23111.
| Decision Date | 16 March 1951 |
| Docket Number | No. 23111.,23111. |
| Citation | 106 F. Supp. 40 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut |
| Parties | In re MILLER. |
Minniola O. Miller, pro se.
Henry P. Bakewell, Alcorn, Bakewell & Alcorn, Hartford, Conn., William Leete, Thompsonville, Conn., Elihu H. Berman, Hartford, Conn., for respondent.
This matter under Section 75 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U.S.C.A. § 203, is before the Court on three pleadings, petitioner's application for confirmation of plan of extension filed with the Conciliation Commissioner on or about October 14, 1950, petitioner's petition for review, filed December 28, 1950, seeking review of the report of the Conciliation Commissioner on the plan, and the motion of Malvy Realty Company, a secured creditor, to dismiss the proceedings, filed on or about January 20, 1951.
The matters were assigned for hearing February 5, 1951. Petitioner did not appear or communicate with the Court, but it was reported by counsel for Malvy Realty Company that he had heard petitioner was ill.
Hearing was had before the Court February 19, 1951, at which counsel for Malvy Realty Company and petitioner were heard. Two weeks were allowed for filing of briefs, extended one day on request of petitioner.
The Commissioner reported that only three creditors had timely filed proofs of claim, the Pioneer Loan Company, in the sum of $308, M. A. Berman, in the sum of $35, and Malvy Realty Company in the sum of $3,195. These claims were allowed in the following amounts:
Unsecured
M. A. Berman $ 35.91
Pioneer Loan 350.00
Total unsecured
claims filed and
allowed — $385.91
Secured
The Malvey Realty
Company $2,281.64
Total secured
claims filed and
allowed — $2,281.64
Of the claims allowed, only Pioneer Loan and Finance Company filed an acceptance of the plan.
Total acceptances were filed from ten unsecured creditors in the sum of $2,580.08. None of these claims except that of Pioneer Loan was filed or allowed.
At the hearing before the Commissioner, objections to the plan were made by Malvy Realty Company and Suffield Savings Bank, secured creditors listed in the schedules as having claims totalling $16,132.26.
Petitioner objects to the vote of the Suffield Savings Bank because no proof of claim was timely filed. This objection appears to be well taken. The only claims entitled to vote are the three filed and allowed. On their vote, however, the plan must be rejected.
Petitioner seeks to avoid this result by a claim that Malvy Realty Company cannot vote because (1) it is a secured creditor, and (2) because the claim shows a preference to Malvy Realty Company and it was part of a conspiracy to restrain petitioner's business which caused the institution of these proceedings upon an earlier petition in 1941.
(1) Secured creditors are not barred from voting under Section 75, for they are affected by any such plan as proposed here, which would indefinitely postpone any realization upon their debts and might further impair their security. The limitations of voting by secured creditors under other chapters of the Act are not applicable under Section 75.
(2) This petition was filed June 22, 1948, The purchase money mortgage to the Malvy Realty Company, which appears to have been executed by petitioner to repurchase property theretofore lost on foreclosure in the state courts, was dated October 23, 1941. No facts are alleged to support any conceivable claim of illegal preference. Nor are any facts in the record pointed out by petitioner which could conceivably support her defense of Sherman Act violation on the part of the creditor here.
Even had the requisite acceptances been filed, the proposed plan could not be approved in its present form, for it is no plan. It does not provide any method or time schedule for liquidation of the existing indebtedness.
Moreover, the lack of diligence by the petitioner in using the Bankruptcy Act and the delay to her creditors caused thereby would require dismissal even had the technical requirements of the Act been otherwise met.
Petitioner has made many charges of fraud and conspiracy against her on the part of her own former counsel and on the part of counsel for her creditors. She has contended that a conspiracy existed between her own counsel who instituted the original proceedings in this court in 1941, when several foreclosure proceedings were pending against her or about to be commenced in the state courts, and counsel for her creditors, to force her into this court and despoil her of her properties. She apparently attempts to draw some unfavorable inference from the fact that her own counsel and a minority stockholder in a creditor corporation were then or later Conciliation Commissioners for this county. Neither one, however, acted as a commissioner in this case or any of the preceding cases involving this petitioner. Nor can the Court find that because the attorney for the town which seeks to collect taxes on the petitioner's lands is alleged also to be a town police commissioner when petitioner's house is alleged to have been broken into, that a conspiracy exists to use the process of this court to despoil petitioner.
In any case, the pending petition was brought by the petitioner herself, she was found to be a farmer by the Court over the vigorous objection of those of her creditors whom she accuses, and she has utterly failed to take diligent action to use the processes of the Act for her rehabilitation as a farmer.
The principal dates in the history of this and preceding petitions in this court are outlined in the Malvy motion and are not disputed by petitioner.
Two earlier petitions were dismissed on the ground that petitioner had not established that she was a farmer within the meaning of the Act. In the first case, in which petitioner was represented by counsel, the order of dismissal was entered May 8,...
To continue reading
Request your trial
- Daggett & Ramsdell, Inc. v. Marzall, Civ. No. 54-52.
-
Miller v. Town of Suffield
...antitrust suit, plaintiff is trying to revive the fantastic claims of fraud and conspiracy discussed and rejected in In re Miller, D.C.Conn., 106 F.Supp. 40, affirmed 2 Cir., 198 F.2d 267, certiorari denied Miller v. Guthrie, 345 U.S. 918, 73 S.Ct. 727, 97 L.Ed. 1351, rehearing denied 345 U......