3rd Annual Frank W. Koger Bankruptcy Symposium

Walden & Pfannenstiel, LLC attended the 3rd Annual Frank W. Koger Bankruptcy Symposium. The Frank W. Koger Bankruptcy Symposium began in May 2008 as a memoriam to the late Honorable Frank W. Koger. The Symposium is held annually each spring at the Charles Evans Whittaker Courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri.

Biography
Frank W. Koger was appointed as a United States Bankruptcy Judge in 1986. In 1996 he was appointed to the newly formed Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Eighth Circuit, and served as its first Chief Judge until his death.

While serving as a Bankruptcy Judge he was elected President of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges in 1996, and served six years on the Bankruptcy Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. As a Bankruptcy Judge, he published 321 opinions, and wrote or participated in another 31 as a Bankruptcy Appellate Judge. His opinions are scholarly, and sometimes humorous, but always reflective of the practical approach he brought to each and every matter that came before him.

His accomplishments as a bankruptcy judge were not surprising to those who had watched his career. He had been first in his class, and an editor of the Law Review, at the Kansas City University School of Law, graduating in 1953. After three years in the Air Force as a Staff Judge Advocate, he returned to Kansas City in 1956, where he practiced law for the next thirty years in the firm eventually known as Shockley, Reid & Koger. During that time, he was elected President of the Commercial Law League of America, taught at several law schools and for the American Institute of Banking, and served as a long-term member of the Board of Directors of St. Luke’s Hospital, among many other civic commitments.

Frank Koger’s life cannot and should not be remembered only for his contributions and service to the law. Just as remarkable was his strong commitment to his wife, Jeanine, to their daughters, Missy and Courtney, and to their granddaughter, Tory.

Great Speakers:

Nancy Rapoport the Gordon Silver Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas started the day with a Multi-media Bankruptcy Ethics Presentation. Showing clips from movies where they got the law right (Body Heat, 1981), they got the ethics mostly right (The Firm, 1993), and where Hollywood was just way off (Legal Eagles, 1986). Are your local attorneys like those portrayed in Hollywood? She'd say there is a mix: The "good" (Inherit the Wind, 1960), the "bad" (Liar, Liar, 1997), and the "ugly" (Jurassic Park, 1993).

Kenneth Klee provided information as found in his new book, Bankruptcy and the Supreme Court. He wrote the book as a desk reference for judges and lawyers to provide access into the Supreme Court's position on key issues of bankruptcy law. It allows attorneys to have a starting point from which to conduct research. It is very interesting that Mr. Klee had to go back to 1898 as a starting point. There were 570 bankruptcy cases heard by the Supreme Court in the last 111 years (that's a lot!) and the Supreme Court values its old holdings. Of course, then you get in to what Congress has been up to over the years...

Next we had an opportunity to ask the experts -- the U.S. Courts, WDMO Bankruptcy Judges, Assistant U.S. Trustee, and Chapter 13 Trustee -- our burning bankruptcy questions, and as oft is the answer in the field of law “it depends.”

The Symposium ended with a FREE BBQ lunch provided by the Court and catered by KC’s own Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue.