Happy 2018! We at The Bankruptcy Cave have been itching to write about the Cherry Growers Chapter 11 case - which really is ground-breaking - but the holidays, life, and yes, work for clients too, all just got in the way. But with each passing week, the case stayed on our minds. So now that time permits, here is the writeup - and see below for the remarkable significance of the case.
In Varela v. AE Liquidation, Inc. (In re AE Liquidation, Inc.), 866 F.3d 515 (3d Cir. 2017), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit became the sixth circuit court of appeals to rule that a "probability standard" applies in determining whether an employer is relieved from giving 60 days’ advance notice to employees of a mass layoff under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (the "WARN Act").
The ability of a trustee or chapter 11 debtor-in-possession ("DIP") to sell bankruptcy estate assets "free and clear" of competing interests in the property has long been recognized as one of the most important advantages of a bankruptcy filing as a vehicle for restructuring a debtor’s balance sheet and generating value. Still, section 363(f) of the Bankruptcy Code, which delineates the circumstances under which an asset can be sold free and clear of "any interest in such property," has generated a fair amount of controversy.
The ability to avoid fraudulent or preferential transfers is a fundamental part of U.S. bankruptcy law. However, when a 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. A pair of bankruptcy court rulings handed down in 2017 widened a rift among the courts on this issue.
The ability to avoid fraudulent or preferential transfers is a fundamental part of U.S. bankruptcy law. However, when a 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 can apply extraterritorially to avoid the transfer and recover the transferred assets. A ruling recently handed down by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York widens a rift among the courts on this issue. In Spizz v. Goldfarb Seligman & Co.
We are all very used to (and very bored of) the on-going debate of what actually constitutes “the media” or “legitimate news.” In most instances, this sort of debate pits exclusive, Columbia-educated, “proper” journalists against those who have large on-line followings and eschew any association with a Dickensian-era newspaper.
We at the Bankruptcy Cave are not very surprised by the ruling yesterday in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp. The Supreme Court in Jevic reviewed a Bankruptcy Court’s decision to approve a settlement (with a distribution of proceeds that contravened the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme) in conjunction with dismissing the bankruptcy case of the Chapter 11 debtor Jevic Holding Corp.
Another bankruptcy trustee catches another hapless college unaware. In Roach v. Skidmore College (In re Dunston), Bankr. S.D. Ga. (Jan 31, 2017), a trustee appears to win the next battle of “bankruptcy estates v. child’s college,” ruling that an insolvent parent who paid the college tuition of an adult child made a fraudulent transfer to the college.
With one exception, the Top 10 List of "public company" (defined as a company with publicly traded stock or debt) bankruptcies of 2016 consisted entirely of energy companies—solar, coal, and oil and gas producers—reflecting, as in 2015, the dire straits of those sectors caused by weakened worldwide demand and, until their December turnaround, plummeting oil prices. The exception came from the airline industry. Each company gracing the Top 10 List for 2016 entered bankruptcy with assets valued at more than $3 billion.
Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act