WM Capital Partners, LLC v. Thornton

The Thorntons (defendants) personally guaranteed loans secured by their trucking business assets; after defaulting, they asked the original lender to repossess and sell the equipment (worth more than the debt at the time), but the bank refused. The bank later sold the loans to WMCP (plaintiff), which eventually repossessed the collateral and sold it at auction in July 2013 — by which time the equipment had depreciated well below the amount owed. WMCP sued for a deficiency judgment; the Thorntons argued the disposition was commercially unreasonable given the lengthy delay, and the chancery court granted WMCP summary judgment.

Whether, if a secured creditor invokes its option to dispose of collateral after default, every aspect of the disposition must be commercially reasonable.