On October 8, 2009 Chief Judge Phillip J. Shefferly issued the “State of the Court” report for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (which has divisions in Detroit, Bay City, and Flint).  The report discusses a number of issues of interest to bankruptcy practitioners.  For example, the Court reported statistics which revealed that the number of case filings in the district continued to grow at a very high rate, continuing a strong trend over the last several years that has seen Michigan’s Eastern District continuously finish first, second or third in the country in the gross number of cases filed.

The report also contained some interesting statistics about pro se petitions (i.e., persons filing for bankruptcy without an attorney). For the calendar year 2007, the district had 1,251 pro se cases filed, or about 3.5% of total cases. For the calendar year 2008, there were 1,871 pro se cases filed in the district, or about 4.5% of our total cases. For the first 8 months of calendar year 2009, the number of pro se cases has grown to 2,333, almost 9% of the total.  In Chapter 7, more than 10% of the district’s  cases are now pro se. The Court noted that “[p]ro se cases require extra judicial and other resources to process through the system. They pose unique challenges to our system. The Chapter 7 Trustees have raised with the bench a number of difficulties that the processing of these cases pose for them.”

The report also contained a significant discussion of reaffirmation areements.  One of the many changes brought about by the BAPCPA in 2005 pertains to reaffirmation agreements. Related to this issue, the Court recently adopted new procedures for reaffirmation agreements.

The report also discussed recent local court rule changes and a number of other issues.  A complete copy of the report is available here.

-Drew Broaddus