A recent decision from the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware further puts into doubt so-called bankruptcy blocking tactics. And the opinion from In re Intervention Energy Holdings, LLC, No. 16-11247, 2016 Bankr. LEXIS 2241 (Bankr. D. Del.

On May 16, 2016, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its opinion in Husky International Electronics, Inc. v. Ritz, Case No. 15-145.

Adding to the unsettled body of case law on the enforceability of prepetition waivers of the automatic stay, on April 27, 2016, the U.S.

A bankruptcy court wrote that filing for bankruptcy is “powerful magic.”  By finding federal preemption of state law fraudulent transfer claims, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in the long-running Tribune case showed just how powerful this magic can be.

In In re Zair, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49032 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 12, 2016), the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York became the latest to take sides on the emerging issue of “forced vesting” through a chapter 13 plan. After analyzing Bankruptcy Code §§ 1322(b)(9) and 1325(a)(5), the court concluded that a chapter 13 debtor could not, through a chapter 13 plan, force a mortgagee to take title to the mortgage collateral.

Background

The failure of debtors to accurately list and value assets in their bankruptcy schedules is certainly not a new phenomenon. Recently, however, we are witnessing an increase in bankruptcy cases where debtors are using clever and deliberate means to omit assets or disguise the true value of their assets in an attempt to thwart recovery by creditors. While the U.S. trustee's or a creditor's remedy for such bad acts is to seek a denial of the debtor's discharge under 11 U.S.C.

On Aug. 4, 2015, in City of Concord, New Hampshire v. Northern New England Telephone Operations LLC (In re Northern New England Telephone Operations LLC), No. 14-3381 (2nd Cir. Aug. 4, 2015), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit addressed the circumstances under which a creditor's lien on the property of a debtor may be extinguished through a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization.

On November 5, 2015, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California issued a “Memorandum re Plan Confirmation” in In re Bowie, Case No. 15-10144 (Bankr. N.D. Cal. Nov.

Individuals may want to think twice before seeking relief under chapter 11 following a recent decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In Zachary v.

Pursuant to Section 727 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, an individual Chapter 7 debtor may receive a discharge "from all debts that arose before the date of the order for relief under this chapter." A Chapter 11 or Chapter 13 debtor may receive similar relief pursuant to Sections 1141 and 1328(b), respectively. Under any chapter, this discharge serves the Bankruptcy Code's principal goal of relieving a debtor from his or her prepetition obligations and providing the debtor with a "fresh start" on emergence from bankruptcy.