IO at Tech Ridge v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co., et al. (May 3, 2018)

A lawsuit commenced by the Debtor was removed from state court by an intervenor. The Debtor moved to remand the suit back to state court on mandatory abstention, permissive abstention, and equitable remand grounds. Concluding that an element of mandatory abstention was not met, the Court used the fourteen-factor test for permissive abstention and equitable remand. The Court found that the results were inconclusive and noted the difficulty of applying multi-factor tests. As the language of the statute indicates that state court matters generally belong in state court, unless a strong federal interest suggests otherwise, the Court considered whether there was a strong federal interest in keeping the case in bankruptcy court. Because the Court found that the lawsuit did not need to be tried in bankruptcy court to resolve the bankruptcy case, the Court remanded the lawsuit to state court.

WL Cite: 2018 WL 2431640