Law Commons^™

Online Auctions Of Repossessed Collateral Under Article 9, Michael Korybut

All Faculty Scholarship

Under U.C.C. Article 9, a secured creditor selling repossessed collateral must do so in a commercially reasonable manner. A traditional form of foreclosure sale is an auction conducted by a professional auctioneer. With the rapid growth of online auctions like eBay, secured parties may want to use the new platform to sell their collateral. But conceived in the 1940s, Article 9 was not drafted with the Internet in mind. The secured creditor will face many novel issues, including whether the defining characteristics distinguishing a real-world public sale from a private sale remain coherent and applicable in cyberspace; whether an online …