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On Wednesday, November 3, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on a party-line vote that could drastically reshape chapter 11 restructurings, particularly in cases involving significant tort liability. The bill, the Nondebtor Release Prohibition Act of 2021 (the “NRPA”) is sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Oversight Chairman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, which has jurisdiction over bankruptcy law-related issues.

Last summer, my colleague C.J. Summers and I posted a report about Saccameno v. U.S. Bank National Association, a Seventh Circuit case in which we had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States.

Although the Supreme Court identified three guideposts for evaluating whether a punitive award is unconstitutionally excessive 23 years ago in BMW v. Gore and refined those guideposts 16 years ago in State Farm v.