| Volume 143 Number 49 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
Do you or a loved one live in a nursing home or assisted living facility? Are you (or they) on Medicaid? Some facilities are trying to take the stimulus payments intended for their residents on Medicaid. Click here for more.
J.C. Penney files for bankruptcy due to COVID-19
J.C. Penney announced on Friday that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The retail chain was already struggling to stay afloat in the midst of the retail apocalypse, and the COVID-19 pandemic only made matters worse.
In a statement, CEO Jill Soltau said the coronavirus outbreak was what ultimately led to the need to file for bankruptcy. J.C. Penney announced in March that it would be closing stores and furloughing employees during the health crisis. The retailer has only been able to reopen 41 of its 846 stores to consumers.
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Your Money
It's not too late to reduce your 2019 tax bill, if you are willing to set some cash aside for retirement. The deadline to make an individual retirement account contribution that will decrease your 2019 tax bill or even boost your refund has been extended to July 15, 2020. Here's why you should make a last-minute IRA contribution: Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Texas Supreme Court holds subrogation available for mortgagee that fails to cure constitutional defect. Answering a question certified to it by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Supreme Court of Texas held that a lender is entitled to equitable subrogation where it failed to correct a curable constitutional defect in the loan documents under Tex. Const. art. XVI, 50. The court noted that “[c]ommon law subrogation has coexisted with this constitutional scheme for more than a century. In the mortgage context, the doctrine allows a lender who discharges a valid lien on the property of another to step into the prior lienholder’s shoes and assume that lienholder’s security interest in the property, even though the lender cannot foreclose on its own lien. This Court has recognized the doctrine in the § 50 context since at least 1890.” The court relied on its ruling in LaSalle Bank National Association v. White, which held Section 50(e) “does not destroy the well-established principle of equitable subrogation.” It “contains no language that would indicate displacement of equitable common law remedies was intended, and we decline[d] to engraft such a prohibition onto the constitutional language.” Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation v. Zepeda Click here for more.