The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will leave in its wake a significant increase in commercial chapter 11 filings. Many of these cases will feature extensive litigation involving breach of contract claims, business interruption insurance disputes, and common law causes of action based on novel interpretations of long-standing legal doctrines such as force majeure.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (“BEIS”) over the weekend announced a number of proposed changes to UK insolvency law in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

In a recent decision, the Court of Appeal reconfirmed that the Duomatic principle can only apply where all shareholders have approved the relevant act of the company. It is not enough that a relevant individual would have approved the act had they known about it: Dickinson v NAL Realisations (Staffordshire) Ltd [2019] EWCA CIV 2146.

The High Court has ordered a liquidator's firm to pay a proportion of the costs incurred by successful defendants following judgment in proceedings commenced by a claimant company in liquidation.

The High Court has ordered a liquidator’s firm to pay a proportion of the costs incurred by successful defendants following judgment in proceedings commenced by a claimant company in liquidation.

Revisiting over 150 years of case law, the High Court has resolved a question on which both the courts and textbooks had given conflicting answers: is a director's liability for payment of a dividend which is unlawful as a result of incorrect accounts fault-based or strict?

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali recently ruled in the Chapter 11 case of Pacific Gas & Electric (“PG&E”) that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) has no jurisdiction to interfere with the ability of a bankrupt power utility company to reject power purchase agreements (“PPAs”).

The Supreme Court this week resolved a long-standing open issue regarding the treatment of trademark license rights in bankruptcy proceedings. The Court ruled in favor of Mission Products, a licensee under a trademark license agreement that had been rejected in the chapter 11 case of Tempnology, the debtor-licensor, determining that the rejection constituted a breach of the agreement but did not rescind it.

Few issues in bankruptcy create as much contention as disputes regarding the right of setoff. This was recently highlighted by a decision in the chapter 11 case of Orexigen Therapeutics in the District of Delaware.

The judicial power of the United States is vested in courts created under Article III of the Constitution. However, Congress created the current bankruptcy court system over 40 years ago pursuant to Article I of the Constitution rather than under Article III.