Although almost all of an individual debtor’s assets become property of the estate upon a bankruptcy filing, certain exceptions exist to the rule at both the federal and state level.  In some jurisdictions, funds held for a debtor in retirement plans are exempt assets.  An open question, however, is whether payments distributed from such plans prior to the petition date are also exempt assets.  The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently held in 

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.

California Assemblyman Ken Cooley (D-Rancho Cordova) has introduced and sponsored Assembly Bill No. 597, the Asbestos Tort Claim Trust Transparency Act, which if passed would require asbestos plaintiffs to disclose all asbestos bankruptcy trust claim documents in asbestos tort actions.

Interested chapter 11 plan investors, beware. A recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that even after the chapter 11 plan has been confirmed and substantially consummated and your money has been invested, an appeal can go forward even if a victory for the appellants would change the chapter 11 plan terms on which you relied and substantially diminish the value of your investment.

On June 26, 2015, the District Court for the Middle District of Florida issued an opinion on consolidated appeals arising from the Bayou Shores SNF, LLC bankruptcy case with potentially broad implications for healthcare bankruptcy cases.  At the heart of the dispute before the District Court was whether the Bankruptcy Court had jurisdiction to enjoin the termination of, and subsequently authorize the assumption of, certain Medicare and Medicaid provider agreements in the bankruptcy case.  As discussed below, the District Court held the Medicare jurisdictional bar set fort

In pari delicto is an equitable defense asserted when a defendant claims that a plaintiff is equally at fault for the wrong that has befallen him. The doctrine is “rooted in the common-law notion that a plaintiff’s recovery may be barred by his own wrongful conduct.” Pinter v. Dahl, 486 U.S. 622, 632 (1988) (citing Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards, Inc. v. Berner, 472 U.S. 299, 306 (1985)).

It has been a few years since we at the Blog have discussed the Barton doctrine, the common law bankruptcy rule requiring a party to seek leave from the appointing court before suing a court-appointed receiver (see here and 

Is market value sufficient proof of reasonably equivalent value for purposes of the good-faith-for-value defense under Texas law? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit certified that question to the Texas Supreme Court on June 30, 2015, after vacating its earlier decision in Janvey v. The Golf Channel, Inc., 2015 WL 3972216, at *3 (5th Cir. June 30, 2015).

“Many debtors…fail to complete a Chapter 13 [bankruptcy] plan successfully,” noted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a recent Supreme Court decision, Harris v. Viegelahn, 135 S.Ct. 1829 (2015). It is for this reason that the Bankruptcy Code provides the nonwaiveable right of a debtor to convert a voluntary Chapter 13 case to a Chapter 7 case at any time. 11 U.S.C. § 1307(a). However, this conversion is not without its challenges. One such challenge is determining how postpetition wages that were collected during the Chapter 13 plan should be distributed after the conversion.

In a post-housing crisis economy, many homeowners, facing a plummet in home values, found themselves trapped in homes that are worth less than the amount they owe bank.  Those homeowners have sought refuge in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, attempting to strip down the first mortgage and leaving many junior lienholders holding nothing but the bag—until now.  In a big win for lenders, the U.S.