While, later this summer, there will be yet another application headed in the direction of Lloydminster's favourite trustee-less, undischarged bankrupt Patrick Ross (who owes me around $110,000, and growing):
I feel compelled to enlighten you all on the most entertaining discovery I made with the recent assistance of a senior analyst at the federal Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy (OSB), and to truly appreciate the fuckedupness of Patrick's situation, you will need to understand just the tiniest bit of bankruptcy law, so bear with me.
As we all know, when one files for bankruptcy, the typical outcome is that the bankrupt's debts will be erased, in exchange for handing over all assets and (often) being assigned a Conditional Discharge Order (CDO) that requires one to pay a fraction of the discharged debt to the set of approved creditors. In short, while the bankrupt gets the benefit of having the majority of debt wiped away, the creditors get somewhat hosed in terms of usually having to accept only a fraction of what they are owed but, hey, that's life. So far, I don't think I've said anything surprising.
However (and here's the surprise), it is open to any of the creditors to argue that they should not be bound by the bankruptcy's stay of proceedings; that is, any creditor is entitled to petition the Court and argue that the bankrupt's behaviour related specifically to them was so egregious and contemptuous, their debt should be removed from the protection of bankruptcy and should still be owed by the debtor in its entirety, which means the debtor still owes that individual creditor the original amount.
Put another way, if a creditor can convince the Court of the irresponsible behaviour of the bankrupt in running up that debt, the Court could eventually say, "You're right, he was an asshole, and your debt is restored and exists outside the context of bankruptcy," whereupon the case is now reduced to a simple matter of a creditor filing claims against a debtor, having nothing to do with the bankruptcy. In short, in a case like this, the creditor now doesn't give a rat's ass about the bankruptcy as it no longer has anything to do with him.
I think you see where I'm going with this, because that is precisely what happened in my case related to the bankruptcy of Patrick Ross. Back in 2020, I applied to the Court for exactly this relief and, as rationale, I documented several years of Patrick's weaselly evasion and tactics and refusal to obey court orders and so on and, well, to make a long story short, the judge saw things entirely my way and issued a ruling, of which the relevant two paragraphs can be seen below:
Here, let me translate: "Given that Mr. Ross has been such an arrogant and contemptuous asshat for all these years, Mr. Day's judgment debt is restored in full and has nothing to do with Mr. Ross' ongoing bankruptcy." So at this point, it's safe to say that I no longer have the slightest interest in Patrick's bankruptcy, or when he gets out of it, or if he ever gets out of it, because it has nothing to do with me. Patrick owes me $110K, and I am arranging to collect it via the mundane route of how a normal creditor collects from a normal debtor, nothing more. But that's not the real reason we're here, because here's the wrinkle I was informed of recently.
(Side note: A small bit of this could be speculation, but it is what I was told by people who are in a position to know these things.)
At this point, the obvious question would be, well, if Patrick's debt to me now exists outside the context of his bankruptcy, how does he eventually get out of bankruptcy? The simple answer now is, I really don't care since it has nothing to do with me. But the question remains, and it was answered thusly by the senior analyst at the OSB:
Patrick can discharge his bankruptcy by paying off the balance of his CDO.
Holy shit.
I say "holy shit" because Patrick's original CDO involved him paying a total of $34,000 over 14 years and, given how little he's paid off, he still owes in the neighbourhood of $30,000 of that CDO. And now you start to see how screwed is Patrick since, according to senior OSB dude, Patrick not only owes me that $110,000 (now entirely unrelated to his bankruptcy), but he remains in bankruptcy until he also pays off his CDO.
Pause and reflect on this, if you will.
It would appear, based on the opinion of someone who should know this stuff, that Patrick is now some $140,000 in debt -- he owes me $110,000 completely independently of his bankruptcy, while he would still be required to pay off his CDO entirely ($30K?) to get out of bankruptcy, a payment which would not affect in the slightest what he owes me. (Oh, and if Patrick came up with the $30K to pay off his CDO, it's unclear who would get that money but it would not be me since, as I have already mentioned, I am no longer a creditor in the context of Patrick's bankruptcy and am not entitled to any assets Patrick turns over to ... whoever.)
In the end, it was Patrick's own arrogance that put him $140,000 in debt, both by refusing to honour the financial obligation of his CDO, as well as years of contemptuous behaviour that convinced a judge to lift the stay of proceedings with respect to me and restore Patrick's original debt to me. And I realize that all of this sounds like total madness, but it appears that Patrick's years of dodging, weaving and ignoring court orders have finally come back to bite him in his pasty, cheeseburger-padded ass.
To sum up, then, Patrick owes me a steadily-increasing $110,000, and whatever additional it costs him to get out of bankruptcy is of no concern to me as it has nothing to do with me.
Are you not entertained?
P.S. It is worth noting that, once upon a time, Patrick had the option of making all of this go away for around $10,000. Those days are long gone.
P.P.S. I am still open to anyone keeping tabs on the travels (and travails) of Patrick; specifically, if he is regularly in the vicinity of Lloydminster and especially if it appears he is once again living with his father. This will be useful information for me in upcoming developments.
BREAKING! I have just been informed that Patrick's father, Ken, passed away last month. It will be interesting to see how Patrick copes with being an undischarged bankrupt without the constant financial support and enablement of his father. All of the appropriate authorities have been informed.
14 comments:
This is kind of hard to believe since it seems like Patrick is getting hosed twice for the same offense. He has to pay to get out of bankruptcy, even though you're not even a creditor in that bankruptcy anymore? Talk about getting shafted.
Anon @ 8:50 AM: I admit it sounds bizarre, but this is what I have been told by a senior analyst at the OSB and, in fact, it's even worse than this.
First, there is no question that Patrick now owes me that $110K (and growing), and that debt is completely outside the context of his bankruptcy, so there is absolutely nothing he can do related to his bankruptcy that will change that. Ever. As far as what Patrick can do *within* his bankruptcy to get out, that's when it gets even uglier for him.
If he tries to pay off the balance of his CDO, he first needs to get a trustee; it can be rehiring his old one, or hiring a new one, but he needs to get a trustee, and that will involve paying the obligatory administration fee, perhaps around $2,000, so there's a couple grand Patrick will need to hand over just to get started. (Oh, and trustees are not *required* to take a client, and with Patrick's history of non-compliance, most trustees will most likely say they're not interested.)
If Patrick can somehow convince a trustee to take his case, that trustee is legally required to demand that Patrick get current with years of financial disclosure that he's never turned in, and that will include disclosing all of his "after-acquired assets" including all of that salary he's made over the years. (The trustee would almost certainly charge more administrative fees to process all of that information, so there's a few thousand more Patrick would have to fork over.)
Finally (and most weirdly), even if Patrick handed over that outstanding $30K plus several thousand more in trustee fees, it's a mystery where that money would go since, as I am no longer a creditor in the context of Patrick's bankruptcy, it shouldn't go to *me*. So I have no idea *where* it would go, but it would be amusing to learn that Patrick paid tens of thousands to *technically* get out of bankruptcy, while not reducing his debt to me by a single dime.
There appears to be one more option for Patrick that saves him all those trustee fees and wasted CDO payments, but I'm going to keep that to myself for now.
I'm guessing that the other option you're referring to is that Patrick simply pays you off what he owes you. This is what happens when someone declares bankruptcy, then suddenly comes into cash. Given a windfall, all of that would be after-acquired assets, and in the worst case, the bankrupt ends up just paying every creditor the full amount of what he owes them.
The advantage of that is that there is no need for a trustee; you just pay your creditors the full amount of what you owe them (or whatever you can convince them to take as a settlement), then you can apply to the court to have your bankruptcy annulled. The other advantage is that, if you do this, your annulled bankruptcy doesn't even count against you as a first bankruptcy, it's as if it never happened.
That's the only thing I can think of that matches what you wrote about -- pay off the creditor(s) in full, and annul your bankruptcy. And not have to deal with trustees.
I didn't think this whole situation could get any funnier, or Twatsy Ross more pathetic. I stand corrected.
Anon @ 11:30 AM: You are, in fact, correct -- by simply paying me off, Patrick would not only avoid the necessity of re-entering bankruptcy, but he would be able to annul his bankruptcy so it would not be on his record. No matter what he does, though, it's going to be expensive. Count on it.
Anonymous @ 11:30AM:
I think the subtlety here is that if Mr. Ross had endeavoured to pay off the initial CDO, the courts would not have separated the CDO and the debt to CC.
Now that they are separate issues, Mr. Ross would have to _convince_ a court to put aside the CDO if he paid off the debt to CC. Given his lack of diligence and compliance with the original CDO, even if he were to magically find the $110K needed to pay off the one debt, the courts might well be less than persuaded that represents cause to let him off the other hook - which he put himself on specifically to escape the original judgment.
I've been thinking about this, and it doesn't seem *right* that Twatsy could pay off his full balance to you and have his bankruptcy totally annulled. Twatsy should never earn a credit card reward point in his life. Further, Twatsy absolutely deserves to be punished - preferably with a custodial sentence - for his decade-plus contempt and breaking of Canadian bankruptcy law.
Even if Twatsy pays you off over 10 years after the fact, that should not erase the sanctions and punishments for his longstanding depolorable conduct.
MgS: At this point, now that I'm going after Patrick outside the context of his bankruptcy, the OSB is welcome to whatever picked-over carcass of Patrick's they can find.
How sure are you about all this? It sounds really weird.
Anon @ 8:41 AM: As I mentioned, there was *some* speculation about the above so let me clarify.
What is *not* speculation is that a judge has lifted the stay of proceedings against me and restored Patrick's original debt to me, so he absolutely owes me $100K+, and that's increasing at 5% per year, plus a good chunk of my costs related to still chasing him. That is a ***FACT***, and there is nothing Patrick can do about that as it is way past the deadline to appeal that ruling. And that debt is not in any way connected to Patrick's ongoing bankruptcy, whatever happens there.
What is still unclear is how Patrick could, on his own, get out of bankruptcy, and based on what OSB Guy told me, even if Patrick tried to hand over $30,000 to clear off his CDO, he can't hand it over to the OSB. The logic there is that the OSB does not deal with individual bankrupts; rather, the OSB is the administration for bankruptcies in Canada. A previous analyst at the OSB made it clear that the management of individual bankrupts is left to the trustee, so my guess is that, if Patrick approached the OSB to pay off his CDO, he would be told to get a trustee, which involves all of the extra expense and inconvenience I described above. And once Patrick engaged a new trustee (if one agreed to even take on his file), Patrick would have to disclose all of his assets and salary and so on over the last many years, all of which would be considered "after-acquired assets" under the law, but what would happen with all of that is not clear to me.
Again, regardless of what sort of clusterfuck is the state of Patrick's bankruptcy (and trust me, it is as clusterfucked up as it gets), nothing that happens there will make the slightest difference in my collection enforcement against Patrick.
I hope I have cleared things up.
@CC:
I’d have to go through some fairly tangled legislation, but the whole bungle around his bankruptcy makes me wonder if the OSB has access to tax records, and if they do, has Patrick even been bothering to file his taxes?
Entirely speculative of course, but given his attitude and the legal mess that is his bankruptcy, it seems likely that he hasn’t bothered to file taxes, or do any number of other administrative tasks for a long time.
MgS: Chances of that are actually good as, years ago, when my then-lawyer demanded such financial info, Patrick claimed that he had not filed taxes for the previous three years. So in addition to everyone else, perhaps Canada Revenue *also* wants to have a chat with him. That would be tres amusante.
Luckily, none of that affects what he owes me.
So, now that Patrick's father had passed, this no doubt changes the game plan by pushing certain things to the forefront. Was Patrick being partially supported by his dad? You've said in the past that this would draw Ken into legal proceedings, but is there actual evidence of this? Would this evidence be harder to get now that Ken isn't around? (An interesting twist would be if it wasn't dad, but one of his siblings doing this, but it would be still be very relevant to how Ken's estate would be dispersed). How do creditors insert themselves into these things? (You may have mentioned this in the past, but this has been unfolding for a long time). I look forward to finding out about all these things, but I'm patient.
Augray: All of the appropriate authorities have been notified of these recent developments. And, yes, that father Ken Ross can no longer subsidize and enable Patrick's bankruptcy will most likely be relevant in what happens in the near future.
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