This author—whose practice is heavily weighted toward representation of official committees in large chapter 11 cases—has previously penned articles relating to questions surrounding the permanency of an official committee.

In a scholarly, comprehensive and lengthy opinion written by one of the Southern District of New York’s most recently appointed Bankruptcy Judges, the issue of whether the reinstatement of defaulted and accelerated debt requires the payment of default-rate interest and fees was answered in the affirmative, undoubtedly to the delight of lenders everywhere.

Last November we wrote about the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Highland Capital Management, L.P., where the court reversed the bankruptcy court’s approval of a plan’s exculpation clause for non-debtors and limited the universe of parties covered by that provision. Relying on Bank of New York Trust Co., NA v. Official Unsecured Creditors’ Comm.

While the Judge-made doctrine of equitable mootness continues to beguile and often stymie parties-in-interest seeking to appeal an order confirming a chapter 11 plan (as well as other orders which are on appeal prior to confirmation of a plan), appellants in the Fifth Circuit can continue to rest assured that the doctrine will be applied only as a “scalpel rather than an axe.” That is because in the Fifth Circuit, the doctrine—which can be described as a form of appellate abstention—is applied only on a claim-by-claim, instead of appeal-by-appeal basis.

Last week this author delved into what has become known as the “Texas Two-Step,” the arguments for and against its permissibility and the broader implications for the bankruptcy system.

In recent weeks, a move dubbed the “Texas Two-Step” has leaped from coverage first in publications geared only for the professional restructuring community, then to the mainstream press, then to hearings before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, and now to a full-blown trial ongoing in a New Jersey bankruptcy court.

In bankruptcy as in federal jurisprudence generally, to characterize something with the near-epithet of “federal common law” virtually dooms it to rejection.

In January 2020 we reported that, after the reconsideration suggested by two Supreme Court justices and revisions to account for the Supreme Court’s Merit Management decision,[1] the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stood by its origina

Although debtors who file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy generally cannot pay prepetition debts until a plan which complies with the “absolute priority rule” is confirmed, there are a number of now well-established exceptions to this rule.

It seems to be a common misunderstanding, even among lawyers who are not bankruptcy lawyers, that litigation in federal bankruptcy court consists largely or even exclusively of disputes about the avoidance of transactions as preferential or fraudulent, the allowance of claims and the confirmation of plans of reorganization. However, with a jurisdictional reach that encompasses “all civil proceedings . . .