Oil price movement through 2014 and into 2015 is a consequence of market fundamentals. Europe’s continued economic woes, paired with the slowdown in China’s economy, have led to a fall in demand for oil.

At the same time, the growing U.S. shale-oil boom (over which OPEC has no control) and the pick-up in drilling in Libya have led to an excess of supply. However, in the past few months the issue has switched from how quickly oil prices have fallen, to how much further they have to fall.

On 13 December 2013, the Court of Session ruled that the liquidators of The Scottish Coal Company Limited (SCC) were not able to disclaim ownership of certain open-cast mines and the environmental permits which were connected with the operation of those mines. This ruling followed an appeal by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), and overturns the previous decision of 11 July 2013, in which it had been ruled that the liquidators were entitled to disclaim this property.

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.