On June 10, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an amended complaint for civil money penalties and other relief under Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibiting “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” and Section 521 of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) prohibiting the use of fraudulent statements to obtain consumer information.

In a recent decision, In re Castleton Plaza, LP, 2013 WL 537269 *1 (Feb. 14, 2013), the Seventh Circuit held that the absolute priority rule – which requires that creditors be paid in full before equity holders receive anything on account of their equity interests under a plan of reorganization – applies equally to the “insiders” of a debtor.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled in Stern v. Marshall[1] that the congressional grant of jurisdiction to bankruptcy courts to issue final judgments on counterclaims to proofs of claim was unconstitutional. For the litigants, this decision brought an end to an expensive and drawn out litigation between the estates of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith and the son of her late husband, Pierce Marshall, which Justice Roberts writing for the majority analogized to the fictional litigation in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.