Bankruptcy & Creditors’ Rights Alert

Small businesses often struggle to reorganize in bankruptcy. To address this issue, Congress passed the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019. The act took effect in February 2020 and makes small business bankruptcies faster and less expensive. At the time of enactment, the act only applied to business debtors with secured and unsecured debts less than $2,725,625.

The brick-and-mortar retail industry has been in a state of flux since online retailers such as Amazon started business in the mid-‘90s. Recent years have been particularly difficult for retailers: in 2018, retailers represented 5 of the 10 largest Chapter 11 bankruptcies. The pace of retail bankruptcies showed no signs of slowing in 2019, with retailers such as Payless Holding LLC, Forever 21, Gymboree, Z Gallerie, and many others all filing Chapter 11 petitions.

The CFPB announced that it settled with Think Finance, LLC and six subsidiaries on February 5.

Bankruptcy Rule 8002 and Federal Rule 58 can sometimes look like this. Carolina and Khaled have a much simpler solution.

When can a Federal Court employ a federal common law rule to make its decision in the case? Justice Gorsuch answer this in Rodriguez v. Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp., U.S., No. 18-1269, 2/25/20.[1] The answer . . . less often than you might think.

So you (allegedly) violated a bankruptcy court order. Whether the debtor alleges you violated the terms of a confirmed plan, failed to provide certain notices required by the bankruptcy rules, violated the discharge injunction, or any other court order, you may be wondering what potential redress the debtor may seek. Although many violations of bankruptcy court orders and rules do not provide for a private right of action, many debtors seek to have their rights vindicated (in the form of the greatest vindicator, cash) through an action for contempt.

Are the regimes of construction adjudication and insolvency incompatible? Recent Court of Appeal authority suggested that they are, but in Meadowside Building Developments Ltd (In Liquidation) v 12-18 Hill Street Management Company Ltd [2019] EWHC (TCC), Adam Constable QC sitting as a district judge in the high court has clarified the exceptional circumstances in which a company in liquidation can enforce an adjudicator’s decision in its favour.

In a unanimous opinion released last week, the Supreme Court provided guidance as to how to determine the finality of an order in a bankruptcy case for purposes of an appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 158(a). The Court held that the adjudication of a creditor’s motion for relief from stay is properly considered a discrete and independent proceeding within a bankruptcy case and is immediately appealable.

Recently, the First Circuit held that a parent’s tuition payments on behalf of an adult child do not benefit the parent’s bankruptcy estate, and a Chapter 7 trustee may therefore claw the payments back as fraudulent transfers.

We here at the Global Restructuring & Insolvency Developments (GRID to our friends) have been following the tuition clawback wars for a few years – the cases in which a bankruptcy trustee sues a college to return tuition that the bankrupt parent paid for their child when the parent was otherwise stiffing other creditors.