Yes is the answer! On 12 July 2023, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services published its report regarding corporate insolvency in Australia.

Objective of the inquiry

The committee’s inquiry assessed how effective the current corporate insolvency regime is at providing benefits to, and protecting, stakeholders as well as the Australian economy. It looked at a number of aspects including:

On 2 March 2023 the Supreme Court of Victoria published its reasons in the matter of Atlas Gaming Holdings Pty Ltd [2023] VSC 91 (the Atlas case) in which Gadens acted on behalf of the Liquidator of four companies seeking a pooling order pursuant to section 579E of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (the Act). There have been very few judgments on section 579E which was introduced in 2007 by the Corporations Amendment (Insolvency) Act 2007 (Cth) Sch 1 items 133ff and operative from 31 December 2007.

In Coosemans Miami v. Arthur (In re Arthur), the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida held last week that individuals in control of a PACA trust may still receive a bankruptcy discharge of debts arising from their breach of such PACA trust. A link to the opinion is here.

Happy 2018! We at The Bankruptcy Cave have been itching to write about the Cherry Growers Chapter 11 case - which really is ground-breaking - but the holidays, life, and yes, work for clients too, all just got in the way. But with each passing week, the case stayed on our minds. So now that time permits, here is the writeup - and see below for the remarkable significance of the case.

We at the Bankruptcy Cave are not very surprised by the ruling yesterday in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp. The Supreme Court in Jevic reviewed a Bankruptcy Court’s decision to approve a settlement (with a distribution of proceeds that contravened the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme) in conjunction with dismissing the bankruptcy case of the Chapter 11 debtor Jevic Holding Corp.

Most restructuring practitioners are aware, either vaguely or through punishing experience, of the power of PACA creditors. PACA (or the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, 7 U.S.C. § 499a et seq. for those who hate brevity) requires that buyers of produce hold such produce – and their proceeds – in trust for the benefit of produce sellers.

Editor’s Note:  Here at The Bankruptcy Cave, we love insolvency stuff; we eat it for breakfast and dream about it at night.  (We are not kidding.)  Sometimes that includes credit-related litigation, and so we keep our pre-trial, trial, and appellate skills honed.  To that end, here is a very helpful cheat sheet we prepared and which we bring with us to every deposition, just in case.  (Your author Leah even got to enjoy a no-show deposition in Chicago last year; she created a perfect record using the below.) 

Have you ever had to press garlic for a recipe? Or put together a Swedish bookshelf, purchased from a Swedish superstore? Yes, you have – and you may have succeeded, so long as you had a garlic press, or the bag of special Swedish tools respectively. But what if you don’t? Yikes.

Stewart v Atco Controls Pty Ltd (in Liquidation) [2014] HCA 15

The High Court this week reinforced the significance and standing of a Liquidator's equitable lien for his or her costs and expenses incurred in realising assets of a company in liquidation, as first clearly espoused by Justice Dixon in the 1933 case of Universal Distributing. Gadens acted for the successful Liquidator/Appellant in the unanimous judgment of the five High Court Justices.

The Principle