The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently ruled in the Puerto Rico bankruptcy case that Fifth Amendment takings claims cannot be discharged or impaired by a bankruptcy plan. As a matter of first impression in that circuit, the Court disagreed with the Ninth Circuit and held that former property owners affected by prepetition takings must be paid in full.

In re Fin. Oversight & Mgmt. Bd., 41 F.4th 29 (1st Cir. 2022)

As previewed in our prior post, Poland’s simplified restructuring proceeding (uproszczone postępowanie restrukturyzacyjne) is now in effect. The enabling legislation – with only minor changes from the description in our prior post affecting such restructurings – was finally adopted on 19 June 2020, signed into law on 23 June 2020 and took effect the same day.

Poland’s Parliament (the Sejm, the lower House of Parliament) is close to passage of an extraordinary debtor restructuring relief law as part of its fourth COVID-19 crisis legislation.

The measure, referred to as Shield Law 4.0 (Tarcza 4.0) would:

The coronavirus pandemic poses new risks and challenges for business at a scale unknown before. In order to assist businesses, the Polish government has announced that a PLN 212 bn ($53bn) stimulus package will be put in place. For a summary see our previous post. Start up of the aid package will take time, and the shape of further aid to come is as yet unknown.

Poland’s Parliament has enacted a new law creating a Borrowers’ Support Fund to help homeowners with mortgages that are underwater.  Official statistics by mortgage amount show that 24.3% of mortgages, totaling PLN 84.1 billion (approx. USD 22.7 billion) exceed the value of the borrowers’ homes, affecting 236,400 borrowers.

Poland’s Supreme Court in a recent ruling found a grant of security for parallel debt to be invalid.