On Aug. 30, 2021, in a significant decision that paves the way for additional substantial recoveries for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals preserved the ability of Irving H. Picard, SIPA Trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS), to pursue $3.75 billion of stolen customer property currently in the hands of participants in the global financial markets.

One deliberately ironic facet of the 2004 film Howard Hughes bio-pic The Aviator (the one with Leonardo DiCaprio) is the fact that the airlines fighting for world dominance in the 1940s were Howard Hughes’ TWA and Juan Trippe’s Pan Am.  By the time of the movie, of course, both famous airlines were gone.  Pan Am’s final descent into bankruptcy court ended in 1991.  Following its own troubles (and two bankruptcies in the 1990s), TWA was acquired by American Airlines in 2001.  But does the death of an airline mean an end to litigation?  Of course not.

The Third Circuit recently held that claims purchased from trade creditors by a claims trader will be disallowed under section 502(d) of the Bankruptcy Code when the seller of the claim received, and did not repay, a preference. In doing so, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit expressed its disagreement with a relatively recent decision in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York which reached the opposite conclusion.

The "WARN Act" (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) requires that larger employers provide 60 days' notice in advance of plant closings or other mass layoffs. This has long been in conflict with bankruptcy practice. A recent Fifth Circuit decision, In re Flexible Flyer Liquidating Trust, 2013 WL 586823, at *1 (5th Cir. Feb. 11, 2013), confirms that exceptions to the WARN Act apply in bankruptcy and interprets these exceptions more broadly than previous decisions.