(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Mi-ryeong = The Supreme Court ruled that even if there was a history of multiple applications for personal rehabilitation in the past and being rejected or canceled, the re-application cannot be determined to be for an unfair purpose based on these circumstances alone.
According to the legal community on the 4th, the first division of the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Dae-yeop Cheon) recently overturned the lower court's decision to dismiss Mr. A's application for personal rehabilitation and sent the case back to the Daegu Rehabilitation Court.
Mr. A applied to initiate personal rehabilitation procedures three times in the past, but all failed.
The application for personal rehabilitation in July 2021 was dismissed because the court's recommendation for correction was not implemented, and in February of the following year, rehabilitation procedures began, but were abolished on the grounds that there was no possibility of implementing the repayment plan.
In January 2024, the personal rehabilitation procedure was applied for and initiated again, but the procedure was later abolished for reasons such as the failure to properly accumulate disposable income.
Mr. A applied for the initiation of personal rehabilitation procedures for the fourth time in September last year.
The first trial dismissed the application, saying that Mr. A was filing a case to the same effect for the purpose of ancillary effects following the initiation or progress of personal rehabilitation procedures. It was believed that he may have repeatedly applied for personal rehabilitation to avoid seizure or compulsory execution.
Mr. A immediately appealed, but the appellate court also made the same decision.
However, the Supreme Court pointed out, "It was wrong to dismiss the appeal based only on Mr. A's past experience."
The Supreme Court said, "If the debtor has applied for the initiation of personal rehabilitation procedures several times in the past, but has been rejected or abolished and has to apply for the initiation again, the circumstances such as the circumstances of the past decision, the degree of recovery of creditors' claims since the past decision, and how the debtor's property situation has changed must be fully reviewed."
At the same time, he explained, “It should not be concluded that the debtor applied for disclosure for an unfair purpose, aiming only for the effect of proceeding with the personal rehabilitation procedure, simply because he has had several previous experiences of dismissal of the application for disclosure or decision to abolish the rehabilitation procedure.”
In this case, the Supreme Court pointed out that Mr. A appears to have been earning regular income by working as a nursing assistant for more than 10 years, and that it is difficult to find any circumstances in the record that could be considered as a waste that deviates from social norms.
At the same time, he ordered the case to be heard and judged again, saying, "The lower court should have sufficiently examined the circumstances in which Mr. A failed to properly pay the accumulated funds according to the past repayment plan and changes in his property status, including the status of repayment to creditors, to see whether he applied for disclosure for an unfair purpose."
