All posts in Community

I survived my first day as assistant professor at my alma mater, UCLA law school, yesterday.  I was nervous for a while until I fully realized that I wasn’t going to be called on at random by the professor to answer difficult questions about the voluminous reading material.  It is certainly more fun watching the socratic method than being subjected to the process.  P.L.

Dear Colleagues!

The 4th Annual Earle Hagen Memorial Golf (and Tennis?) Tournament Start-up Meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 18th at 6:00 pm in downtown LA. If you would like to be part of this very successful ongoing event, please contact our Chairperson, Jim King @ king@kingobk.com. This event has raised over $70,000 thus far for the Debtor’s Assistance Project.

KEITH HIGGINBOTHAM 2012 cdcbaa President

The big cafeteria at Roybal is closing this friday – for good apparently.   I guess that little coffee shop will be getting more business.  There are no plans for a new cafeteria as far as I know.   One is supposedly coming to the Federal Building across the courtyard in the next x amount of months.

Dr. Michael Kamrava filed Chapter 7 on December 23, 2011. His Chapter 7 Trustee is Elissa Miller.

2:11-bk-62013-TD Michael M Kamrava
Case type: bk Chapter: 7 Asset: No Vol: v Judge: Thomas B. Donovan
Date filed: 12/23/2011 Date of last filing: 12/30/2011

I was surprised to see that he does not own any real property or even a motor vehicle, he does not even pay rent. His main assets are miscellaneous home furnishings and about $7,000 in the bank.  He also claims an ownership interest in a trust that owns four medical patents, but claims that there is no market for them. The trust was created in 2001.

His priority debts total approximately $61,000 — all taxes. His unsecured non-priority debts total approximately $1.16M. His wife and corporation (WEST COAST IVF CLINIC, Inc.) are codebtors on most of the debts. The “primarily business debts” box is checked on the petition.

Mr. Kamrava’s medical license has been revoked because of the Octomom debacle and Schedule J states that “he is not currently earning any income. Reinstatement could occur in 3 years.”

Conference Approves Fee Increase
In September 2011, the Judicial Conference of the United States authorized an increase in the Judiciary’s electronic public access fee in response to increasing costs for maintaining and enhancing the electronic public access system. The increase in the electronic public access (EPA) fee, from $.08 to $.10 per page, will take effect on April 1, 2012.  The change is needed to continue to support and improve the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, and to develop and implement the next generation of the Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system.

The EPA fee has not been increased since 2005.  As mandated by Congress, the EPA program is funded entirely through user fees set by the Conference.

The Conference was mindful of the impact such an increase could have on other public entities and on public users accessing the system to obtain information on a particular case.  For this reason, local, state, and federal government agencies will be exempted from the increase for three years.  Moreover, PACER users who do not accrue charges of more than $15 in a quarterly billing cycle would not be charged a fee. (The current exemption is $10 per quarter.)  The expanded exemption means that 75 to 80 percent of all users will still pay no fees.