Overview

Introduction

On August 26, Indiana Bankruptcy Court Judge Jeffrey J. Graham issued an order in the bankruptcy cases of Aearo Technologies (“Aearo” and, together with its affiliate debtors, the “Debtors”), denying the Debtors’ motion for a preliminary injunction protecting non-debtor parent 3M Company (“3M”) against a slew of litigation related to hearing-protection devices that were allegedly defective and resulted in hearing loss and related injuries.

On August 26, 2020, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the Bankruptcy Code does not require subordination agreements to be strictly enforced in order for a court to confirm a cramdown plan, so long as the plan does not discriminate unfairly.

As outlined in our client publication of March 27, 2020 (Update for Borrowers and Lenders in Germany), by a new law effective since March 27, 2020 (the “German Covid-19 Insolvency Law Amendment”), the obligation of the management of a legal person pursuant to section 15a of the German Insolvency Act (“German InsO”) has been suspended until September 30, 2020 if certain conditions are met.

In light of the growing pandemic of COVID-19 the German government has decided on a number of unprecedented restrictions for all areas of private and business life which were unimaginable just a few weeks ago. As a result, many production facilities and businesses had to shut down. While the consequences for many companies are already dramatic, the full impact on the economy is still unpredictable as it is unclear how long the current restrictions will subsist.

On December 19, 2019, the Second Circuit held that appellants’ state law constructive fraudulent transfer claims were preempted by virtue of the Bankruptcy Code’s safe harbors that exempt transfers made in connection with a contract for the purchase, sale or loan of a security from being clawed back into the bankruptcy estate for

On February 25, 2020, the United States Supreme Court in Rodriguez v. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation^[1] struck down a judicial federal common law rule—known as the Bob Richards rule—that is used by courts to allocate tax refunds among members of a corporate affiliated group where the group does not have a written tax sharing agreement in place, or, at least in some federal Circuits, where an agreement fails to allocate the refunds unambiguously.

On January 14, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a decision resolving the question of whether a motion for relief from the automatic stay constitutes a discrete dispute within the bankruptcy that creates a basis for a final appealable ruling, or whether it simply is a controversy that is part of the broader Chapter 11 case, such that appeals would not need to be taken until the conclusion of the Chapter 11 case.

The oil and gas industry in the United States is highly dependent upon an intricate set of agreements that allow oil and gas to be gathered from privately owned land. Historically, the dedication language in oil and gas gathering agreements — through which the rights to the oil or gas in specified land are dedicated — was viewed as being a covenant that ran with the land. That view was put to the test during the wave of oil and gas exploration company bankruptcies that began in 2014.