More than 1.1 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2008, a 32% increase from the year before and the largest annual total since 2005, according to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER).Filings for companies were up 50% to 64,318, while individual filings were up 1.03 million.
On Sept. 15, 2008, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was the largest Chapter 11 filing of all-time. That was followed several days later by Washington Mutual, which became the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.
The largest increases in bankruptcy filings were in California (85%) and Arizona (81%), as those states also had the highest foreclosure rates.
