Delaware’s Bankruptcy Court has recently issued two insightful opinions that impact a creditor’s ability to establish the “receipt” element of a valuable 503(b)(9) administrative expense priority claim.

In an era when goods or materials often originate from suppliers or manufacturers outside the United States, bankruptcy courts are grappling with when “receipt” of goods occurs for the purpose of 503(b)(9) claims.

Prepetition, Millennium Lab Holdings II, LLC, Millennium Health, LLC, and RxAnte, LLC (the Debtors) reached a settlement with various government entities (the USA Settling Parties) relating to, among other things, claims against the Debtors for violations of the Stark law, Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act (FCA). The Debtors also negotiated a restructuring support agreement with an ad hoc group of lenders (the Ad Hoc Group) holding debt under a 2014 existing credit agreement in the original principal amount of $1.825 billion (the Credit Agreement).

Many creditors who have supplied goods to a debtor before a bankruptcy case begins think their only prospects for recovery will be pennies on the dollar. While often times, pre-petition claims are relegated to receive small, if any, distributions, there is a unique carve-out in Section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code that elevates “goods” supplied in the 20 days before a bankruptcy filing to administrative expense status.

The Bankruptcy Deadline Checklist is a quick reference guide for those who handle bankruptcy cases including judges, lawyers, paralegals, credit managers, collection agents, professors, law students, and others.

Lenders and secured creditors often require that debtor-customers direct all receivable collections into a lockbox, hoping to wrangle any available proceeds to apply to their debtors’ outstanding debt. In requiring a debtor or its customer to remit payments to a lockbox, however, creditors may be overlooking a potential source of significant liability. A creditor using a lockbox may unwittingly expose itself to greater risk and liability than just a debtor’s default if it receives funds that were collected as sales tax on a debtor’s goods or services.