When an employer is insolvent and administrators appointed, job losses are often an inevitable consequence. In this blog we look at the legal obligations arising where redundancies meet the threshold for collective consultation, and the implications for administrators arising out of the recent Supreme Court in the case of R (on the application of Palmer) v Northern Derbyshire Magistrates Court and another.

When does the legal obligation to collectively consult apply?

On 24 February, the Government published draft regulations that, if implemented, will impose new restrictions on pre-pack administration sales to connected parties. For all `substantial disposals' (which will include `pre-pack' sales) to connected parties, taking place within eight weeks of the administrators' appointment, the administrators will either need creditor consent or a report from an independent `evaluator'.

Context

Until 2013, no circuit court of appeals had weighed in on the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s pronouncement in the 203 North LaSalle case that property retained by a junior stakeholder under a cram-down chapter 11 plan in exchange for new value “without benefit of market valuation” violates the “absolute priority rule.” See Bank of Amer. Nat’l Trust & Savings Ass’n v. 203 North LaSalle Street P’ship, 526 U.S. 434 (1999), reversing Matter of 203 North LaSalle Street P’ship, 126 F.3d 955 (7th Cir. 1997).

2012 is shaping up as a year of bankruptcy first impressions for the Ninth Circuit. The court of appeals sailed into uncharted bankruptcy waters twice already this year in the same chapter 11 case. On January 24, the court ruled in In re Thorpe Insulation Co., 2012 WL 178998 (9th Cir. Jan. 24, 2012) ("Thorpe I"), that an appeal by certain nonsettling asbestos insurers of an order confirming a chapter 11 plan was not equitably moot because, among other things, the plan had not been "substantially consummated" under the court's novel construction of that statutory term.