Happy National ESIGN Day! Eighteen years ago this week, Congress passed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, ensuring the legal validity of contracts entered into using electronic signatures and records. National ESIGN Day was established by Senate Resolution 576 and House Concurrent Resolution 290 on June 30, 2010.
A fact of business today is that customers – both consumers and other businesses – and employees expect to transact digitally. To remain competitive, companies find themselves increasing their efforts to digitally transform their businesses.
A discharge is effective whether or not the secured party intended to discharge that particular registration. That was the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,1 which left JP Morgan unsecured for $1.5 billion as a result of a paperwork mix-up. Case law in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada suggests that the decision here would be the same. Consequently, lawyer
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced on 24 September 2020 (view announcement here) the introduction from 1 January 2021 of an innovative new restructuring process for Australian small incorporated businesses with liabilities less than AUD1 million, which adopts key aspects of the US Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.
Certain amendments to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, which became effective on December 1, 2017, impose affirmative obligations on secured creditors to protect the right to distribution in a bankruptcy case. Specifically, Rule 3002(a) now requires a secured creditor to file a proof of claim in order to gain allowance for a secured claim.
On September 26, 2014, in the Farnum case (Krys v. Farnum Place, LLC (In re Fairfield Sentry Ltd.), 768 F.3d 239 (2d Cir. 2014)) the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that Bankruptcy Code section 363 review applied to a transfer of a Securities Investor Protection Act (“SIPA”) claim held by an off-shore entity in foreign liquidation proceedings recognized in the United States. The decision is significant for two reasons.
In many bankruptcy cases, disappointing recoveries lead creditors to look for deep pockets as targets. This scrutiny is frequently directed at a bankrupt company’s directors and officers (D&Os or fiduciaries) in so-called D&O suits. These lawsuits are most often brought by bankruptcy trustees, creditors’ committees, liquidating trusts, and other bankruptcy estate representatives.
In its recent decision Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 137 S. Ct. 973 (2017), the United States Supreme Court held that a bankruptcy court may not approve a structured dismissal of a chapter 11 case that provides for distributions that fail to follow the standard priority rules, unless the affected creditors consent to such treatment.
Bankruptcy Code protects certain Ponzi scheme payments. The trustee for debtor Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS) sued to avoid fictitious profits paid by BLMIS to hundreds of customers over the life of the Madoff Ponzi scheme. The defendant customers moved to dismiss certain of these avoidance claims pursuant to 11 USC Sec. 546(e), which shields from recovery securities-related payments made by a stockbroker. The trial court agreed that Sec. 546(e) barred the claims, dismissing them, and the Second Circuit affirmed.
A company’s intellectual property rights[1] are some of its most valuable and most enduring assets. They are also often the most encumbered, or the most enhanced, by contract.
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