In a somewhat unexpected development given his recent appointment to a second 14-year term a mere 5 years ago, Bankruptcy Judge Robert D. Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York announced that he intends to retire as of June 30, 2022.

On September 1, 2021, Judge Robert Drain issued a much-anticipated oral ruling approving Purdue Pharma L.P.’s plan of reorganization. The plan, which has garnered significant attention from the media, legislators, academics, and practitioners, releases current and future members of the Sackler family and many of their associates and affiliated companies – none of whom filed for bankruptcy themselves – from liability in connection with any possible harm caused by OxyContin and other opioids that Purdue Pharma manufactured and distributed.

In its August 5th, 2021 VeroBlue Farms decision,[1] the Eighth Circuit lent its voice to a growing body of criticism of the equitable mootness doctrine contending that its use to bar challenges to confirmed reorganization plans should be circumscribed.

Judge Stacey Jernigan did not mince words in a recent opinion sanctioning the former CEO of Highland Capital Management, LP. Entities related to the former CEO brought suit against Highland (the debtor in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding), and sought leave from the district court to add Highland’s replacement CEO as a defendant. In Judge Jernigan’s view, such conduct violated her “gatekeeping” orders that required the bankruptcy court’s approval before “pursuing” actions against the new CEO.

In a recent opinion from the Delaware Bankruptcy Court in the Dura Automotive Systems bankruptcy case,[1] Judge Karen Owens held that executory contracts cannot be impliedly assumed through course of conduct by the parties, under binding Third Circuit precedent, notwithstanding that a minority of courts outside of the Third Circuit have allowed it

Perhaps proving the maxim that people should be careful what they wish for, in a second significant ruling stemming from theJevic Holding Corp. bankruptcy case, on May 5, 2021, the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware found that Jevic’s Chapter 7 trustee, appointed following the conversion of the debtors’ cases from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, did not have standing to continue claims originally brought against the debtors’ prepetition lenders by the Chapter 11 creditors’ committee.

Fallout continues from the November 2020 bankruptcy sale of Town Sports’ assets to a new entity backed, in part, by an ad hoc group of Town Sports’ prepetition lenders.

With more than $1.7 trillion in student loan debt outstanding in the United States, student loan borrowers sometimes try to turn to the bankruptcy courts for relief, often without success due to the fact that most student loans are presumed to be nondischargeable.[1] In its July 15, 2021 decision in In re Homaidan,

As we reported, on June 21, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to revisit the rigid Brunner standard for determining “undue hardship” capable of discharging student debt. The same day, United States Bankruptcy Judge Michelle M.

United States Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale recently dismissed the National Rifle Association’s Chapter 11 petition as not filed in good faith. The decision leaves the 150-year-old gun-rights organization susceptible to the New York Attorney General’s suit seeking to dissolve it.