In re: Kenneth W. Stine

PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
 In Re: KENNETH W. STINE,
Debtor,
KENNETH W. STINE, No. 00-2352 Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
NATIONSBANK,
Defendant-Appellant. 
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore.
J. Frederick Motz, District Judge.
(CA-99-3678-JFM; BK-98-8051-6-ESD; AP-99-5417)
Argued: March 1, 2001
Decided: March 15, 2004
Before WIDENER and MICHAEL, Circuit Judges, and
Cynthia Holcomb HALL, Senior Circuit Judge of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
sitting by designation.
Affirmed by published per curiam opinion.
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Ronald Scott Canter, WOLPOFF & ABRAMSON,
L.L.P., Bethesda, Maryland, for Appellant. Mark Franklin Scurti,

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MARK F. SCURTI, P.A., Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. ON
BRIEF: Robert Neil Grossbart, David A. Rosenberg, ROBERT N.
GROSSBART, P.A., Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
OPINION
PER CURIAM:
The order of the district court appealed from is described in Bank
of America N.A. (USA) v. Stine, 252 B.R. 902 (D. Md. 2000), and the
case was referred by us to the Court of Appeals of Maryland, which
certification order is under the style of: In re: Stine//Kenneth W. Stine
v. NationsBank, No. 00-2352, ___ F.3d ___ (4th Cir. 2001).
The Court of Appeals of Maryland answered our question and filed
its opinion under the style of: Bank of America, f/k/a NationsBank v.
Kenneth W. Stine, Misc. No. 3, ___ A.2d ___ (Md. 2003).
The question we certified to the Court of Appeals of Maryland is
quoted in the opinion of that court, ___ A.2d ___, ___, as follows:
[w]hether a debtor in bankruptcy may claim as exempt from
the bankruptcy estate, pursuant to Maryland Code, Anno-
tated, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 11-504 (1998)
wages previously garnished by a judgment creditor pursuant
to Maryland Code Annotated, Commercial Law II §§ 15-
601-607 (2000), when the garnishment is avoided as a pref-
erential transfer.
The Court of Appeals of Maryland answered that question "in the
affirmative." ___ A.2d ___, ___.
The order of the district court appealed from is accordingly
affirmed on the opinion of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, which
we adopt as our own.
AFFIRMED
2 IN RE: STINE

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