Use, sale or lease of estate property outside ordinary course
Special rules for use of cash collateral
Jevic and distributions inconsistent with the Bankruptcy Code's priority scheme
Claar Cellars
The Bankruptcy Court's Ruling
The ability of a bankruptcy trustee or a chapter 11 debtor-in-possession ("DIP") to use "cash collateral" during the course of a bankruptcy case may be vital to the debtor's prospects for a successful reorganization. However, because of the unique nature of cash collateral, the Bankruptcy Code sets forth special rules that apply to the nonconsensual use of such collateral to protect the interests of the secured creditor involved. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Washington examined these requirements in In re Claar Cellars, LLC, 2020 WL 1238924 (Bankr. E.D.
On 18 May 2020, the same date that Romania switched to a state of alert that will expire on 17 June 2020, Law no. 55/2020 entered into force, which contains amendments to legal provisions for regular insolvency during the state of alert.
The most important amendments include a deferral of the obligation to file for insolvency, an increase in the threshold for petitioning for insolvency, extension of the duration for the reorganisation plan and an extension of other procedural deadlines.
The following is a list of the major amendments contained in the law:
In This Issue:
U.S. Supreme Court: Creditors May Immediately Appeal Denials of Automatic-Stay Relief
Except for disastrous fires that sparked the largest bankruptcy filing of the year, liabilities arising from the opioid crisis, the fallout from price-fixing, and corporate restructuring shenanigans, economic, market, and leverage factors generally shaped the large corporate bankruptcy landscape in 2019. California electric utility PG&E Corp.
Section 510(b) of the Bankruptcy Code provides a mechanism designed to preserve the creditor/shareholder risk allocation paradigm by categorically subordinating most types of claims asserted against a debtor by equity holders. However, courts do not always agree on the scope of the provision in attempting to implement its underlying policy objectives. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently examined the broad reach of section 510(b) in In re Linn Energy, 936 F.3d 334 (5th Cir. 2019).
The ability of a bankruptcy trustee to avoid fraudulent or preferential transfers is a fundamental part of U.S. bankruptcy law. However, when an otherwise avoidable transfer by a U.S. entity takes place outside the U.S. to a non-U.S. transferee—as is increasingly common in the global economy—courts disagree as to whether the Bankruptcy Code’s avoidance provisions apply extraterritorially to avoid the transfer and recover the transferred assets. Several bankruptcy and appellate courts have addressed this issue in recent years, with inconsistent results.
Rumors of another recession multiplied as the tumultuous second year of the Trump administration came to a close. Highlights of 2018 included a simmering trade war with China; political upheaval after the House of Representatives was retaken by Democrats in the midterm elections; mayhem in financial markets; and, in December, the beginning of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, triggered by lawmakers’ refusal to provide $5.7 billion in funding for a U.S.-Mexican border wall.
A draft government ordinance amending the Romanian insolvency law was published on September 12. The bill is intended to increase recoverability of state receivables from insolvent companies and to reduce the debtor’s control over the proceedings.
One of the main changes relates to denying the existing right of the insolvent debtor to nominate an insolvency practitioner to be appointed as official receiver. Under the current procedure, it was mandatory for the insolvency court to follow debtor’s proposal, if the creditors did not make a proposal of their own.
In the wake of scandal-driven bankruptcies filed by nearly 20 U.S. Roman Catholic dioceses and religious orders, scrutiny has been increasingly brought to bear on the benefits and burdens that federal bankruptcy laws offer to eleemosynary (nonprofit) corporations. Nonprofits seek bankruptcy protection for a variety of reasons.