Law Commons^™

The Spearing Tool Filing System Disaster, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

Debtor name errors have been a substantial and persistent problem for filers and searchers in the Uniform Commercial Code Article 9 filing system. Filers make errors in spelling, punctuation, and spacing, use trade names, and include extraneous words. The law prior to 2001 excused such errors if they were minor and not seriously misleading. That put the burden on searchers to conduct reasonable diligent searches to find erroneous filings. The effect was to render all searches problematic and costly. The drafters of revised Article 9 conceived a brilliant solution to the problem with respect to corporate debtors (registered entities). First, …

An Uneasy Relationship Between The Bankruptcy Reform Act And The Uniform Commercial Code: Delayed And Continued Perfection Of Security Interests, George L. Dawson

UF Law Faculty Publications

The widespread adoption of article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in an ‘uncertain correlation’ between state personal property security law and the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. Although the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 frequently relied upon existing state law to determine the validity of a secured creditor's interest in the personal property of a bankruptcy debtor, its provisions were more compatible with pre-Code personal property security law. As a result, courts often struggled to reconcile the meanings of the two statutes.

The enactment of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 held out the promise …