When the fallout from failed intellectual-property litigation collides with bankruptcy, the complexities may be dizzying enough, but when the emerging practices and imperatives of litigation financing are imposed on those complexities, the situation might be likened to three-dimensional chess. But in the court of one veteran bankruptcy judge, the complexities were penetrated to reveal that elementary errors and oversights can have decisive effects.
It is a unique characteristic of debt restructuring under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code that a majority of a class of creditors can accept a modification of the terms of the debts owed to the class members, as provided in a plan of reorganization, and thereby bind non-accepting class members.[1] The ordinary route to confirming a Chapter 11 plan is to obtain its acceptance by a majority of every impaired class of creditors and equity hold
Avoiding a fraudulent transfer to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) in bankruptcy has become easier, or at least clearer, as a result of a recent unanimous decision by a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Zazzali v. United States (In re DBSI, Inc.), 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 16817 (9th Cir. Aug. 31, 2017).
The long-running litigation spawned by the leveraged buyout of Tribune Company, which closed in December 2007, and the subsequent bankruptcy case commenced on December 8, 2008[1] has challenged the maxim that “there’s nothing new under the sun” even for this writer with four decades of bankruptcy practice behind him.
On May 3, 2017, the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico filed a voluntary petition for relief on behalf of Puerto Rico in federal court there. The filing required the Chief Justice of the United States to designate a district court judge to conduct the case. On May 5, Chief Justice Roberts appointed District Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York. Judge Swain was a bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of New York before joining the district court in 2000.
Although almost eight years have lapsed since the chapter 11 cases of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based SemCrude L.P.
On May 4, 2015, a unanimous United States Supreme Court in Bullard v. Blue Hills, 135 S. Ct.
Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued an important, 28-page opinion that confirmed a jury verdict, holding former officers and directors of a not-for-profit health care provider in bankruptcy, jointly and severally liable to the facility’s creditors – in the amount of $2.25 million – for breach of fiduciary duty in failing to properly oversee and manage the non-profit entity. Official Comm. of Unsecured Creditors ex rel. Lemington Home for Aged v. Baldwin (In re Lemington Home for Aged), No.
On January 13, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied a petition for en banc review of the Second Circuit’s September 2014 panel decision holding that bankruptcy courts are required to review the propriety of a Chapter 15 debtor’s transfers of property interests within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., even if such a transfer has already been approved in the debtor’s foreign proceeding. This decision represents a departure from prior cases, in which U.S.