On October 3, 2017, Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware issued a decision holding that the Bankruptcy Court had constitutional authority to approve third-party releases in a final order confirming a plan of reorganization.
In less than a week after its bankruptcy filing, a debtor was able to obtain confirmation of its prepackaged plan of reorganization in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. In allowing the case to be confirmed on a compressed timeframe that was unprecedented for cases filed in the Southern District of New York, the Bankruptcy Court held that the 28-day notice period for confirmation of a chapter 11 plan could run coextensively with the period under which creditor votes on the plan were solicited prior to the commencement of the bankruptcy case.
The law on debt restructurings and liability management is back to where it was. Yesterday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the controversial District Court decisions in the Marblegate-Education Management bondholder litigation. The case attracted wide-spread attention in financial markets, and we discussed it in an earlier client alert.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a decision in Pacifica L 51, LLC v. New Investments, Inc. (In re New Investments, Inc.) (16 C.D.O.S. 11723, Nov. 4, 2016), which held that a secured creditor can collect default interest in connection with a cure under a chapter 11 plan, thereby rendering void the long-established rule under Great W. Bank & Tr. v.
In a June 3, 2016 decision1 , the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (“the Bankruptcy Court”) invalidated, on federal public policy grounds, a provision in the debtorLLC’s operating agreement that it viewed as hindering the LLC’s right to file for bankruptcy. Such provision provided that the consent of all members of the LLC, including a creditor holding a so-called “golden share” received pursuant to a forbearance agreement, was required for the debtor to commence a voluntary bankruptcy case.
In its recently issued decision in Husky International Electronics, Inc. v. Ritz, a 7-1 majority of the Supreme Court has clarified that intentionally fraudulent transfers designed to hinder or defraud creditors can fall within the definition of “actual fraud” under Section 523(a)(2)(A) of the Bankruptcy Code and can sometimes result in corresponding liabilities being non-dischargeable in a personal bankruptcy proceeding.1
In a March 29, 2016 decision,1 the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (the "Court of Appeals") held that creditors are preempted from asserting state law constructive fraudulent conveyance claims by virtue of the Bankruptcy Code's "safe harbors" that, among other things, exempt transfers made in connection with a contract for the purchase, sale or loan of a security (here, in the context of a leveraged buyout ("LBO")), from being clawed back into the bankruptcy estate for distribution to creditors.
The failure of debtors to accurately list and value assets in their bankruptcy schedules is certainly not a new phenomenon. Recently, however, we are witnessing an increase in bankruptcy cases where debtors are using clever and deliberate means to omit assets or disguise the true value of their assets in an attempt to thwart recovery by creditors. While the U.S. trustee's or a creditor's remedy for such bad acts is to seek a denial of the debtor's discharge under 11 U.S.C.
On November 5, 2015, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California issued a “Memorandum re Plan Confirmation” in In re Bowie, Case No. 15-10144 (Bankr. N.D. Cal. Nov.
On January 4, 2016, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (the “Bankruptcy Court”) deviated from SDNY precedent and held that, despite the absence of clear Congressional intent, the avoidance powers provided for under Section 548 of the Bankruptcy Code can be applied extraterritorially. As a result, a fraudulent transfer of property of a debtor’s estate that occurs outside of the United States can be recovered under Section 550 of the Bankruptcy Code.