It’s a new year, and we have a new law affecting debtors and creditors in California.  Effective January 1, 2016, California’s Uniform Voidable Transactions Act (UVTA) has replaced California’s Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (UFTA). The full text of the new UVTA can be found here.  While the UVTA is similar to the UFTA in most respects, certain important changes and key aspects of the new law are discussed below.

On July 30, 2015, Relativity Media, along with 144 of its affiliates, filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  The multi-million dollar entertainment company, which produced films such as The Social Network, The Fighter, Limitless, and others, is headquartered on Beverly Blvd. in Beverly Hills.  As of the date of the bankruptcy, according to its court filings, Relativity and its affiliates had approximately 89 full- and part-time employees and approximately 760 temporary production personnel in the film and television side of the business.

In a surprise move, the Fifth Circuit vacated its recent, controversial Golf Channel opinion, potentially giving the Golf Channel a second chance in a case that seemed lost.  As I discussed in my previous post, the Fifth Circuit recently held that the Golf Channel had to return over $5.9 million in payments it had received from Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford’s Stanford International Bank, pursuant

The rapper Curtis James “50 Cent” Jackson III filed a voluntary chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in Connecticut bankruptcy court on Monday, July 13, 2015.  Jackson rose to prominence with songs like In Da Club and P.I.M.P. from his 2003 album Get Rich or Die Trying (also the name of his 2005 film biopic) and has starred in many film and television projects, including the Starz show Power and the upcoming movie Southpaw.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a decision that should make defendants in Ponzi cases shiver in their boots.  The court said that the defendant, the Golf Channel, had to return nearly $6 million and that it could not take advantage of a commonly-invoked “reasonably equivalent value” defense.  Even though the Golf Channel had aired advertisements promoting the business, which would normally have been “reasonably equivalent value,” the Fifth Circuit held that by airing advertisements promoting the Ponzi scheme, the Golf Channel did nothing to help the Ponzi scheme

On Thursday I published a blog article entitled Will “Wellness Make Us Better?, in which I posed the question of whether or not the U.S. Supreme Court would finally rule on whether or not bankruptcy courts can, in Stern type cases, enter a final judgment with the consent of the parties.