Abstract
The Brazilian Commercial Code entered in vigour in 1850, but this did not radically alter the manner how bankruptcy cases were handled by the law courts. Legal procedure continued heavily conditioned by local agents and by the actions taken early in the bankruptcy proceedings (conciliation and arbitration). In this situation, the task of determining the value of debt of insolvent merchants and establishing evidence against these individuals to be able to prove the existence of a fraudulent bankruptcy turned extremely complicated. Based on cases of insolvency in the second half of the nineteenth century we will identify factors that might explain why the tribunals struggled to establish evidence in merchants’ records and how they would, faced with this situation, try to reach a decision.
Keywords:
Bankruptcy; experts; law courts