The Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) (PPSA) came into effect on 30 January 2012 and has introduced major changes for businesses that lease or hire personal property. If you lease or hire personal property it is vital that you understand how the PPSA affects your business, including what additional steps you need to take to protect your property and the consequences for not doing so, especially as the PPSA’s transitional provisions will end shortly.

What does the PPSA mean for your business?

In preparing a statement supporting the determination that recusal from a bankruptcy proceeding was unnecessary, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Richard E. Fehling quoted Master Sergeant Georg Hans Shultz from the television sitcom Hogan’s Heroes: “I KNOW NOTHING!  NOTHING!”

Criminal defendants facing onerous restitution obligations as part of their sentence might contemplate a bankruptcy filing, in the hope of staving off the restitution obligation. In a case of first impression, the Second Circuit recently considered whether the Bankruptcy Code’s automatic stay provision halts a defendant’s obligation to pay restitution and firmly closed the door on that potential gambit.

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Presumed Reasonable Absent Certain Circumstances 

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I just had an interesting discussion with a partner on the subject of the sale of exempt property in bankruptcy.  We concluded that even though tenant by the entireties real estate might be exempt from creditor claims in some states, nonetheless in bankruptcy it is still property of the estate under Bankruptcy Code section 541 and subject to the bankruptcy trustee’s general powers of sale under Code section 363(b).  The analysis goes like this:  section 541 creates a bankruptcy estate that includes all interests of the debtor in property without mention of exemptions, and sec

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What is the impact of a bankruptcy filing on the ability of a franchisee to continue utilizing the trademarks of the franchisor?