Until 2013, no circuit court of appeals had weighed in on the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s pronouncement in the 203 North LaSalle case that property retained by a junior stakeholder under a cram-down chapter 11 plan in exchange for new value “without benefit of market valuation” violates the “absolute priority rule.” See Bank of Amer. Nat’l Trust & Savings Ass’n v. 203 North LaSalle Street P’ship, 526 U.S. 434 (1999), reversing Matter of 203 North LaSalle Street P’ship, 126 F.3d 955 (7th Cir. 1997).

2012 is shaping up as a year of bankruptcy first impressions for the Ninth Circuit. The court of appeals sailed into uncharted bankruptcy waters twice already this year in the same chapter 11 case. On January 24, the court ruled in In re Thorpe Insulation Co., 2012 WL 178998 (9th Cir. Jan. 24, 2012) ("Thorpe I"), that an appeal by certain nonsettling asbestos insurers of an order confirming a chapter 11 plan was not equitably moot because, among other things, the plan had not been "substantially consummated" under the court's novel construction of that statutory term.

In June 2011, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case known as Stern v. Marshall. The U.S. Supreme Court held that filing a proof of claim in a bankruptcy case does not constitute consent to the bankruptcy court’s jurisdiction over all counterclaims or actions that the bankruptcy estate may later bring against the creditor.

In fact, filing the proof of claim constitutes consent only to those claims or actions that either (1) stem from the bankruptcy case itself; or (2) are necessary to the resolution of the creditor’s proof of claim.  

When a traditional nonbanking company files a case under the Bankruptcy Code, a judge is appointed to be the neutral arbiter of disputes that arise between the debtor and its creditors.

Introduction