Late last month, the Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari review of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in PEM Entities LLC v. Eric M. Levin & Howard Shareff. At issue in PEM Entities is whether a debt claim held by existing equity investors should be recharacterized as equity. The Supreme Court is now poised to resolve a split among the federal circuits concerning whether federal or state law should govern debt recharacterization claims.
In a recent opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit expanded the protections afforded to individual members of an official creditors’ committee against certain lawsuits. Specifically, in In re Yellowstone Mountain Club, LLC, 841 F.3d 1090 (9th Cir.
Recently, in Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. (“Caesars”), U.S. Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar denied payment of indenture trustee Wilmington Trust’s attorneys’ fees and costs in connection with the Debtors’ motion to approve a settlement. The U.S. Trustee objected to payment arguing that the Debtor could not rely on 11 U.S.C. § 363 (seeking settlement approval) as authority to pay Wilmington Trust’s fees and costs. Sustaining the U.S.
On May 4, Judge Vincent Bricetti of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a ruling in the Momentive Performance Materials cases affirming the bankruptcy court’s confirmation rulings. Key themes raised in this case of interest to distressed investors and addressed in Judge Bricetti’s ruling include
Can a waiver of rights ever be beneficial to the person granting the waiver? Yes. In In re Adamson Apparel, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held, in a 2-1
Judge Drain’s recent bench rulings in Momentive Performance Materials in 2014 generated a great deal of controversy in the distressed debt world. Distressed investors, lenders, and commentators have questioned whether the Momentive rulings will lead to an industry trend in which debtors seek to cram down their secured lenders to take advantage of the ability to do so at below market interest rates.
Today’s blog article, which looks at the ability of a debtor to assume, assign, or reject oil and gas “leases” under section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code, is the third in the Weil Bankruptcy Blog series, “Drilling Down,” where we review issues at the intersection of the oil and gas industry and bankruptcy law.
Like many of our readers, we at the Bankruptcy Blog spent our holiday breaks curled up with our copies of the American Bankruptcy Institute Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11 Final Report and Recommendations, which by now are quite dog-eared.
In Czyzewski v. Sun Capital Partners, Inc.1, the United States District Court for the District of Delaware affirmed a Bankruptcy Court determination that a private equity firm was not liable for its subsidiary portfolio company’s failure to provide adequate notice of a plant closing under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act).