On August 11, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed lower court decisions rejecting Lehman Brothers Special Financing Inc.’s (“LBSF”) attempt to recover nearly $1 billion in payments to noteholders and enforcing certain Priority Provisions (defined below) that subordinated payments otherwise payable to LBSF under related swap transactions.

In a recent decision, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York held that claim disallowance issues under Section 502(d) of the Bankruptcy Code "travel with" the claim, and not with the claimant. Declining to follow a published district court decision from the same federal district, the bankruptcy court found that section 502(d) applies to disallow a transferred claim regardless of whether the transferee acquired its claim through an assignment or an outright sale. See In re Firestar Diamond, 615 B.R. 161 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2020).

InIn re Juarez, 603 B.R. 610 (9th Cir. BAP 2019), the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed a question of first impression in the circuit with respect to property that is exempt from creditor reach: it adopted the view that, under the "new value exception" to the "absolute priority rule," an individual Chapter 11 debtor intending to retain such property need not make a "new value" contribution covering the value of the exemption.

Background

In In re Palladino, 942 F.3d 55 (1st Cir. 2019), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit addressed whether a debtor receives “reasonably equivalent value” in exchange for paying his adult child’s college tuition. The Palladino court answered this question in the negative, thereby contributing to the growing circuit split regarding the avoidability of debtors’ college tuition payments for their adult children as constructively fraudulent transfers.

Background

On August 9, 2019, in a unanimous decision (written by a former bankruptcy judge), the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the confirmation of the Peabody Energy Chapter 11 plan (“Plan”)¹ with a prominent backstopped rights offering component.

In Mission Product Holdings, the Supreme Court Endorses “Rejection-as-Breach” Rule and Interprets Broadly the Contract Rights that Survive Rejection

In a matter of first impression, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York recently analyzed whether a debtor may exempt from her bankruptcy estate a retirement account that was bequeathed to her upon the death of her parent. In In re Todd, 585 B.R. 297 (Bankr. N.D.N.Y 2018), the court addressed an objection to a debtor’s claim of exemption in an inherited retirement account, and held that the property was not exempt under New York and federal law.

In Kaye v. Blue Bell Creameries (In re BFW Liquidation), 899 F.3d 1178 (11th Cir. 2018), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that a liability for an allegedly preferential transfer may be reduced by the amount of new value given, regardless of whether that new value has already been repaid by the debtor before its bankruptcy filing.

On June 4, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Lamar Archer & Cofrin LLP v. Appling,[1] resolving a circuit split on the issue of whether a debtor’s statement about a single asset constitutes “a statement respecting the debtor’s financial condition” for the purposes of 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(2).

Alerts and Updates

The Supreme Court’s opinion is significant because it will encourage creditors to rely on written, rather than oral, statements of debtors as to both their assets and overall financial status, which are better evidence in a nondischargeability case.