In a recent decision, Judge David Novak of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia vacated the Chapter 11 plan confirmation order entered by the bankruptcy court in the Mahwah Bergen Retail Group (formerly known as Ascena Retail Group) case, holding that the plan’s non-consensual third-party releases were unenforceable.¹ The ruling arrived shortly after an

Partially walking back her prior pronouncements suggesting that she would rule to the contrary (which we previously wrote about here), on October 13, 2021, District Court Judge Colleen McMahon denied the U.S. Trustee’s request for an emergency stay pending appeal of the Purdue Pharma confirmation order.

On October 10, 2021, Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a temporary restraining order, delaying implementation of Purdue Pharma’s plan of reorganization, which was confirmed by Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain on September 17th, pending argument on the U.S.

On September 1, 2021, Judge Robert Drain issued a much-anticipated oral ruling approving Purdue Pharma L.P.’s plan of reorganization. The plan, which has garnered significant attention from the media, legislators, academics, and practitioners, releases current and future members of the Sackler family and many of their associates and affiliated companies – none of whom filed for bankruptcy themselves – from liability in connection with any possible harm caused by OxyContin and other opioids that Purdue Pharma manufactured and distributed.

Perhaps proving the maxim that people should be careful what they wish for, in a second significant ruling stemming from theJevic Holding Corp. bankruptcy case, on May 5, 2021, the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware found that Jevic’s Chapter 7 trustee, appointed following the conversion of the debtors’ cases from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, did not have standing to continue claims originally brought against the debtors’ prepetition lenders by the Chapter 11 creditors’ committee.

Fallout continues from the November 2020 bankruptcy sale of Town Sports’ assets to a new entity backed, in part, by an ad hoc group of Town Sports’ prepetition lenders.

On Friday, March 19, 2021, Congressional lawmakers introduced a bill that would amend the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to prohibit bankruptcy judges from permanently enjoining or releasing legal claims of states, tribes, municipalities or the U.S. government against non-debtors.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, on February 25, 2021, a New York bankruptcy court dismissed the involuntary bankruptcy petition brought earlier in the month by three student loan borrowers against Navient Solutions (see our prior post on the borrowers’ petition here). Navient is the student loan servicing arm of Navient Corporation, one of the world’s largest student loan-originators.

On February 8, 2021, three student loan borrowers filed an involuntary petition against Navient Solutions LLC in New York bankruptcy court seeking to force Navient into bankruptcy.[1] Navient Solutions is the loan servicing arm of Navient Corporation, a student loan originator which manages approximately $300 billion in student loan debt for more than 12 million borrowers.

In a new opinion issued in the Chuck E. Cheese bankruptcy cases, In re CEC Entertainment, Inc., Case No. 20-33163 (Bankr. S.D. Tex.),¹ Judge Marvin Isgur of the U.S.