From: Madison, Wisconsin

NACBA’s September 2009 Member of the Month, Patricia K. (“P.K.”) Hammel, is a partner in a five-member firm, Herrick & Kasdorf LLP, located in the historic Churchill Building on the Capital Square in Madison, Wisconsin.  Hammel’s practice is now primarily focused on consumer bankruptcy.  Hammel worked for 17 years at the King Street Law Collective in downtown Madison (one of the last law collectives, which closed in 2002), serving low-income clients in civil and criminal and pro se family law matters.   The other members of her firm include a Chapter 7 panel trustee (Bob Kasdorf), and attorneys who do significant tenant representation, representing most of the housing, grocery and other consumer cooperatives in Madison as well as the Madison Police and Fire Commission.

NACBA members will recall the Kuehn decision, issued by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on April 16, 2009 (In re Kuehn, 563 F.3d 289, 243 Ed. Law Rep. 624, Bankr. L. Rep. P 81,465, 7th Cir. 2009).  In 2007, Hammel sued Cardinal Stritch University for violating the bankruptcy stay and discharge by withholding the debtor's masters' transcripts after her unpaid tuition was discharged in a Chapter 7 case she filed in 2003.  The Court of Appeals upheld the decisions of the District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Judge Barbara Crabb) and the Bankruptcy Court (Judge Robert D. Martin, a panelist at NACBA’s 2009 Annual Convention in Chicago NACBA) in finding the University in contempt because that refusal to release her transcripts was "an act to collect a debt and thereby violated the automatic stay and discharge injunction..."  Furthermore the debtor was entitled to damages for each year she received less pay since she was unable to produce the official transcript to her employer (a local public school district), and attorneys' fees.  

After Hammel won at the District Court level in December, 2007, she was “more surprised than pleased” to receive the notice of appeal by the creditor's attorneys (a large, multinational law firm who clearly thought they couldn't be beat), as she had never had a case before the Court of Appeals.  Opportunity knocked: “It seemed like a good time to join NACBA, which I'd been meaning to do for years.” Hammel found great support through NACBA:  “David Yen and Tara Twomey of NACBA's amicus project provided invaluable assistance in procedural matters, suggestions on the brief, and conducted a phone conference ‘moot argument’ to prepare me for the oral argument before the Seventh Circuit (wondered at first if I was crazy to consider it, but we were 2-0 and had strong support from the first two courts).”   

Hammel has another reported Bankruptcy Court decision, In Re Frazier (116 B.R. 675, Bankr. W.D. Wis. 1990), in which the court found that the debtor's "right to receive" social security benefits under 11 U.S.C. sec. 522(d)(11) includes the right to keep a lump sum back benefit that the debtor had received prior to filing his Chapter 7 case.

After two years at Grinnell College in Iowa, Hammel migrated ever further from her native Nebraska to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she graduated with a B.A. in history in 1977. She then went on to the U.W. Law School with the idea of being able to support herself anywhere, including in a small town. (She was involved in an organic farming group and started a housing cooperative in Madison).  During law school, Hammel focused on Indian law and environmental law.  One project with the Indian Law Center involved state law requiring preservation of "abandoned cemeteries" after remains of native people were discovered at a suburban Milwaukee construction site. She also worked with attorneys on the Menominee and Hoopa Valley reservations in Northern Wisconsin and Northern California on tribal governance and fishing rights issues, as well as with the Black Hills Alliance in South Dakota regarding uranium mining, and was active in the National Lawyers' Guild and reproductive rights organizations (once debating a judge from Michigan who denied consent to a minor seeking permission for an abortion). Hammel passed the South Dakota bar (Wisconsin still has the "diploma privilege" for graduates of U.W. and Marquette), but decided to stay in Madison and try to start her own practice there.

Hammel joined NACBA in December 2007 “partly to get help with my circuit court appeal, and partly to get access to the listserv and take my consumer bankruptcy practice to a higher level than I thought I could get from the state bar programs.”  She was familiar with the convention materials from working with a NACBA member, Sandra Baner of Janesville, Wisconsin, with whom she had worked for several years.  Impressed with the quality of the publications and confident that she could learn things from other NACBA members that she had not learned in many years of self-teaching (not having had any "mentor" in bankruptcy practice), she joined and attended her first national convention this past May in Chicago.  Hammel especially enjoyed meeting her "fellow travelers" from across the country at the Convention and learning more about tax issues, marital property law and foreclosure.

Hammel has two children – Fiona, who is a high school senior and Brendan, who a junior at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.  Hammel is involved in the Dane County foreclosure prevention group, working for health care reform on behalf of uninsured and underinsured clients and self employed people like her, and various political campaigns.  She likes camping Up North in Wisconsin and the U.P. and jumping into Lake Superior on her birthday every August.

As for her parting message to fellow NACBA members, Hammel says: “Keep up the fight for bankruptcy mortgage modification legislation in the U.S. Congress!  We cannot stem the foreclosure tsunami without it!!”