In an Arkansas case in which Judge Mahoney sat by designation, the judgment debt at issue was non-dischargeable under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(4). The court issuing the judgment specifically found that the debtor had committed fraud and breached his fiduciary duties in the performance of his duties as a bankruptcy trustee. These findings brought the debtor's conduct within the scope of "defalcation" as defined by the Supreme Court in Bullock v. BankChampaign, N.A., 133 S. Ct. 1754 (2013).

The court granted the trustee's request to employ special counsel to recover property of the estate, finding little likelihood that counsel's representation of creditors in the case would create a conflict of interest in its limited role for the trustee.

On the trustee's complaint to recover allegedly fraudulent transfers made by the debtors in repaying investors in what essentially was a Ponzi scheme, the court denied summary judgment, allowing the transferees to put on evidence of their good faith as a defense under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act.

The court granted the defendants' motion to alter or amend the portion of a fraudulent transfer summary judgment order concerning the plaintiff's entitlement to a presumption of intent to defraud. The court denied the motion to alter or amend with regard to the applicable standard of good faith under the Nebraska Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act.

The court denied the defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and motion for summary judgment based on statutes of limitation. The additional counts in the trustee's amended complaint related back to the original counts concerning fraudulent and preferential transfers, so they were not time-barred. The original counts were rather vague but were fleshed out by discovery and incorporated into the parties' preliminary pretrial statement, which became the operative pleading, so they survived the motion to dismiss.

The court agreed that this adversary proceeding, which had been referred from district court upon a party's bankruptcy filing, should be returned to district court to determine liability for fraud related to the sale of securities. The third-party indemnification and contribution claims against the debtor could be severed and held in abeyance in the bankruptcy court pending the outcome of the district court litigation.

The court denied a request for monetary sanctions for violation of the discharge injunction where a creditor received an overpayment after the bankruptcy case was completed and closed. The creditor's counsel did not respond to repeated requests for return of the funds until a hearing was scheduled on the debtor's motion for turnover of property. The creditor then released the funds.

The court denied a motion for sanctions filed by a creditor involved in a long-standing dispute with the debtor. The debtor's post-petition publication of potentially defamatory material about the creditor was inappropriate, but likely within his free speech rights. The creditor could pursue state-court remedies if warranted.

In this fraudulent transfer action, the court denied the defendant transferee's motion for summary judgment on the grounds that factual issues exist as to whether there was any unencumbered value in the property that was transferred and whether the debtor received a reasonably equivalent value for the transfer. Additional evidence is needed to explain the difference between the valuation of the property on the debtor's financial statement and the valuation of the property in the asset purchase agreement executed approximately two months later.

The court overruled an objection to a claim that was based on a loan made ostensibly to the debtors but used by the debtors' owner for personal purposes. The evidence indicated that a portion of the funds were used to pay operating expenses for one of the debtors. In addition, the court found that despite a purported transfer of all of the debtors' assets prior to the loan being made, the owner continued to operate the business and the lender could reasonably have believed the funds would be used for business purposes.