Last month, a federal district court affirmed a bankruptcy court’s ruling that an ex-NFL player’s potential future recovery from a concussion-related class action settlement agreement was shielded from the reach of creditors in the former player’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding. The ruling turned on the bankruptcy court’s finding that the potential future settlement payments were more akin to a disability benefit, which is exempt under Florida law, than a standard tort settlement, which is not.
Background
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently examined and then clarified and set forth the test for evaluating the appealability of bankruptcy orders in an opinion released in the case Ritzen Group v. Jackson Masonry. In doing so, the appellate court reaffirmed the “longstanding and textually-compelled rule of [a] looser finality” standard in bankruptcy as compared to general civil litigation, and concluded that a denial of a motion to lift stay was a final appealable order subject to the fourteen-day appeals period established in Bankruptcy Rule 8002(a).
Recently, in the Advance Watch bankruptcy, the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that a bankruptcy judge is authorized to enter a final default judgment in an adversary proceeding against a foreign defendant who failed to respond to a validly-served summons and complaint, in spite of being an Article I judge.[1] Notably, the court found that the recent Supreme Court decision, Wellness International Network, Ltd. v. Sharif, 135 S. Ct. 1932 (2015), a further iteration of the Stern v.
Recently, in Anderson v.
Recent caselaw demonstrates that there is a current judicial disagreement over whether the Bankruptcy Code will permit a cramdown in a jointly-administered bankruptcy case when a consenting class exists for only one of the debtors. This implicates the important issue of de facto substantive consolidation and the potential risks it poses to unsecured creditors.
The Bankruptcy Code provides bankruptcy trustees, debtors, and creditor committees with “avoidance powers” that allow them to set aside and recover certain transfers that a debtor made before filing for bankruptcy.[1] These avoidance powers are, however, limited by a number of exceptions enumerated in the Bankruptcy Code, including the securities safe harbor at § 546(e). Section 546(e) protects from avoidance any transfer “made by or to (or for the benefit of) . . .
On March 5, 2018, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in U.S. Bank National Ass’n ex rel. CWCapital Asset Management LLC v.