In Re: Laverne Leonard
- Lewis Liman
- 1:20-cv-01518
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Laverne Leonard v. HSBC Bank USA, Judge Liman denied two bankruptcy-appeal stay motions without prejudice and scheduled a conference on consolidation and briefing.
Laverne Leonard and the appellees in the four related appeals from the bankruptcy court’s orders, including the parties to the two denied stay motions.
What happened
Laverne Leonard v. HSBC Bank USA, decided by the Southern District of New York, involves four related appeals from orders of a bankruptcy court in the same underlying case. The court noted a pending request to combine two appeals, disputes about documents filed publicly, and a missing response brief.
The court scheduled a telephone conference for October 22, 2020, to address whether the related cases should be combined, document-filing issues, and any necessary new briefing schedules. Two motions seeking to pause the bankruptcy appeals were unopposed but gave no explanation supporting a stay.
Judge Lewis J. Liman denied both stay motions without prejudice to renewal because Laverne Leonard had not shown why a stay was justified under the required factors. The court directed the clerk to close the two docket entries for those motions.
The detailed version
- In Re: Laverne Leonard · No. 1:20-cv-01518
- Lewis Liman
- Oct. 14, 2020
Background
The order addresses four related cases—Nos. 20-cv-1518, 20-cv-1558, 20-cv-6811, and 20-cv-6806. Each case is an appeal from an order of the bankruptcy court in the same underlying action, identified as bankruptcy case No. 19-12337. The appellees in No. 20-cv-1558 had moved to consolidate that case with No. 20-cv-1518, and Laverne Leonard opposed the motion.
The court also noted issues concerning the filing of Leonard’s brief and supporting exhibits on the public docket in No. 20-cv-1558. Because of those issues, the appellee in that case had not filed a responsive brief.
Conference and Case Management
The court ordered a telephone conference for October 22, 2020, at 4:00 p.m. At the conference, the court would address the pending motion to consolidate, consider whether all four related cases should be consolidated, address documents that had not been filed on the public docket, and set new briefing schedules if necessary.
Motions to Stay
Also pending were motions to stay the bankruptcy-court orders while the appeals proceeded in Nos. 20-cv-1558 and 20-cv-1518. A stay temporarily pauses the effect of an order. The court explained that an appellant seeking a stay must address four factors: likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable injury without a stay, harm to other interested parties, and the public interest. The burden of establishing entitlement to a stay rests with the appellant.
The motions were unopposed, but each contained only a bare request for a stay and no argument or statement supporting one.
Ruling
The court held that Leonard had made no showing explaining why a stay was justified under the relevant factors. It therefore denied the motions to stay without prejudice to renewal. The clerk was directed to close Dkt. No. 11 in No. 20-cv-1518 and Dkt. No. 17 in No. 20-cv-1558. The order addressed the stay requests and case-management issues; it did not decide the merits of the underlying bankruptcy appeals.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.