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Watts v. Argent Mortgage Company, LLC, AP 06-6235, Doc. #36

In earlier order in this preference action brought by the chapter 7 trustee, the court concluded that the security deeds held by a purchase money lender on the Debtor’s property were perfected within the meaning of § 547(e)(1)(A) at the time they were executed and delivered because, under Georgia law, a bona fide purchaser would have had inquiry notice of them at all times prior to their recordation based on the Debtor’s absence of record title and the existence of a cancelled security deed on the property in favor of another lender.  On reconsideration, the court ruled that, when established by reference to a bona fide purchaser standard, the rights of a bankruptcy trustee are determined on a hypothetical basis and without regard to what an actual purchaser actually did or did not know about the facts as they actually existed. A bankruptcy trustee’s rights based on a hypothetical bona fide purchaser’s rights are neither diminished nor augmented by attributing actual knowledge or its absence to the trustee    In other words, the facts cannot be changed, and  the bankruptcy trustee’s rights, i.e., the legal consequences of those facts, are determined on the basis of those actual facts.

File: 
Date: 
04/03/2007