Bobby N. Harmon, CPCU, ARM
Springfield, KY 40069
June 14, 2001
Mr. Steve Guttman, Esq.
Attorney at Law
1132 Bishop St., Ste 1404
Honolulu, HI 96813
RE: Harmon Ch. 7 Bankruptcy Case No. 99-04339 - IRS Notice of Levy
Dear Mr. Guttman:
This acknowledges receipt of your letter dated June 11, 2001, in which you address issues raised in several of my previous letters. As I have been attempting to keep these various issues as separate and simple as possible, I will only address the IRS Levy in this letter.
In my letter of June 11th, I inquired: “... it appears that you are saying that the IRS has the legal right to place a levy on our assets because part of the debt is unsecured and the Bankruptcy Court has not yet authorized the disbursement.
“Is this a correct interpretation of your letter?
“If this is correct, then does the same law apply to any other assets we may have? Can we expect the IRS and other creditors, for example, to garnishee our salaries or place liens on other property that we may own?”
Your answer to these questions was: “Answering the questions in the June 11 letter would be inconsistent with my statements in the prior paragraph and are examples of the type of questions that a bankruptcy attorney could answer without knowing the specifics of your case. Although I will probably regret giving you any response to this most recent letter, I will inform you that the granting of your discharge removed the stay on any action by the Internal Revenue Service. My comment as to part of the debt being unsecured had to do with the disbursement scheme and not the legality of the IRS action. I think any further comment would be giving you legal advice and, as noted many times before, I am not your attorney.”
The prior paragraph that you refer to states: “You are allowed to proceed pro se. I have made my comments as to your retaining counsel because some of your questions could easily be answered by an attorney with familiarity of the bankruptcy system. Further, as I have tried to explain to you, my role is representing the Trustee and not to give you advise (sic) or speculate with you as to what a trustee may or may not do in a specific case or fact situation. The Bankruptcy Rules provide the procedure to raise legitimate questions a party to a case may have. Because you are pro se, my initial responses differed from what would have been written to an attorney. The appropriateness of any further correspondence will be determined by the same standard that would apply to an attorney representing a party to the case.”
Thank you for clarifying your position. I believe you are saying that I need to address questions such as this directly with the Internal Revenue Service, and I will proceed to do so.
I will respond to other comments in your June 11th letter in separate correspondence.
Very truly yours,
Bobby N. Harmon
cc: Gayle Lau, Esq.
Curtis Ching, Esq.
Office of the U.S. Trustee
1132 Bishop St., Ste 602
Honolulu, HI 96813
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