In Virginia Broadband, LLC (Bankr. W.D. Va. Sept. 9, 2013), the unsecured creditors committee moved to dismiss an LLC’s chapter 11 bankruptcy case alleging a flaw in the authorization of the LLC’s bankruptcy filing caused by an authorizing member’s individual bankruptcy filing. Specifically, the committee alleged that when the authorizing member filed his individual bankruptcy case, Virginia law divested him of his non-economic (voting) rights in the LLC.
In In re Charles A. Grogan and Sarah A. Grogan, No. 11-65409 (Bankr. D. Ore. Sept. 10, 2013), the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Oregon confirmed the Debtors’ Third Amended Chapter 11 plan. The Debtors are Christmas tree farmers and their plan proposed to liquidate the majority of their Christmas tree farm and sell six major parcels of land. While the two main secured creditors were deemed to have rejected the plan, the court found the cram down standards of section 1129(b)(2)(A) were applicable.
The Seventh Circuit has explicitly adopted the Second Circuit’s broad interpretation of the terms “transfer” and “settlement payment” in the Bankruptcy Code’s safe harbor provisions. See Peterson v. Somers Dublin Ltd., No. 12-2463, --- F.3d ----, 2013 WL 4767495 (7th Cir. Sept.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York recently held that an ad hoc committee of bondholders, holding $162.5 in senior secured bonds, lacked standing to participate in the issuer-debtor’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. In re American Roads LLC, 2013 WL 4601006 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.
While newly discovered Element 115 (or “ununpentium” as scientists are temporarily calling it) appears to have vanished quickly in a flash of radiation in front of the eyes of Swedish scientists, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Oklahoma confirmed that make-whole is a well-established stable compound and here to stay.
In an adversary proceeding arising out of the Chapter 11 case of Residential Capital, LLC (“ResCap”), the bankruptcy court denied in part and granted in part a secured lenders’ motion to dismiss certain claims in the case. Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creds. V. UMB Bank, N.A. (In re Residential Capital, LLC), Adv. P. No. 13-01277, -- B.R. --, 2013 WL 4069512 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Aug. 13, 2013). At issue was certain collateral, which was part of the secured lenders’ collateral, that the lenders released to enable ResCap to pledge it to different third parties.
A Western District of New York bankruptcy court has held that the safe harbor provisions of section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code apply to leveraged buy-outs of privately held securities. See Cyganowski v. Lapides (In re Batavia Nursing Home, LLC), No. 12-1145 (Bankr. W.D.N.Y. July 29, 2013).
While the arrival of His Royal Highness Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge has dominated the British (and the world) headlines this week, the U.K. Supreme Court delivered its own long awaited bundle of joy earlier today. In the latest decision in the laborious Nortel and Lehman litigations, the U.K. Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and held that pension claims should not be treated as priority claims and, instead, they should rank equally with general unsecured claims.
On June 25, 2013, the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (the “Court”) issued a memorandum decision in the Lehman Brothers SIPA proceeding1 holding that claims asserted by certain repurchase agreement (“repo”) counterparties (the “Representative Claimants”) did not qualify for treatment as customer claims under SIPA.
Thanks to Anna Nicole Smith and the June 2011 landmark Supreme Court decision in Stern v. Marshall, there are seemingly more questions regarding a bankruptcy judge’s authority to enter final orders (or even proposed orders) than ever before. Those unanswered questions have created considerable uncertainty and, not surprisingly, lengthier and costlier litigation in bankruptcy. Thankfully, the Supremes decided on June 24, 2013 that they will address two of the many questions left unanswered by Stern.