Editor’s Note: Here at The Bankruptcy Cave, we love insolvency stuff; we eat it for breakfast and dream about it at night. (We are not kidding.) Sometimes that includes credit-related litigation, and so we keep our pre-trial, trial, and appellate skills honed. To that end, here is a very helpful cheat sheet we prepared and which we bring with us to every deposition, just in case. (Your author Leah even got to enjoy a no-show deposition in Chicago last year; she created a perfect record using the below.)
Including an unsecured creditor in an agreed payments waterfall does not by itself confer on that unsecured creditor the benefit of a mortgagee’s usual duties on enforcement of security, or a direct claim against the sale proceeds.
You may recall the holding and analysis of ASARCO [1]/ from Jay’s previous post, here.
With the steep collapse of oil and gas prices in the last eighteen months, dozens of exploration and production companies have declared bankruptcy and many more companies are expected to file for bankruptcy protection unless prices rebound dramatically. As the prospect of further bankruptcies looms, it is important for parties to understand how to adequately protect their security interests and the nature of competing liens that could prevent them from fully realizing on the value of the collateral securing their counterparty’s obligations.
Securities Alert February 1, 2016 E&P Restructurings: Focus on Uptiering Transactions By: Jennifer Wisinski, Paul Amiel, Bill Nelson and Kristina Trauger Times are tough, very tough, for many mid-cap and small-cap exploration and production (“E&P”) companies. Crude oil prices have fallen from more than $100/barrel in July 2014 to a twelve-year low of less than $30/barrel in January 2016. Natural gas prices are at a three-year low. The growing consensus is that depressed prices will experience a slow recovery that may continue into the 2020s.
Over the summer, four appellate court decisions addressed the doctrine of equitable mootness: In re Tribune Media Co., 799 F.3d 272 (3d Cir. 2015); In re One2One Commc’ns, LLC, No. 13-3410, 2015 WL 4430302 (3d Cir.
A recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Franklin v. McHugh, 2015 WL 6602023 (2d Cir. 2015), illustrates the dire consequences of failing to comply fully with all electronic filing requirements for a notice of appeal.
In a recent bankruptcy case, Richard Lewiston unsuccessfully attempted to shelter his assets in the Lois and Richard Lewiston Living Trust (the “Trust”) from inclusion in his bankruptcy estate based on the Trust’s spendthrift provision. Here, the bankruptcy court looked to Michigan state law in applying the provisions of the Bankruptcy Code and concluded the Trust property was part of Lewiston’s bankruptcy estate.
Facts about the Trust:
In a decision that surprised many, the United Stated Circuit Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (the “10th Circuit Court of Appeals”) affirmed decisions finding that a payment made on account of a first time transaction between a debtor and creditor can qualify for the ordinary course of business defense under 11 U.S.C. § 547(c)(2).
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently clarified the meaning of “reasonably equivalent value” in a complex fraudulent transfer case. Its decision in In re PSN USA, Inc., Case No. 14-15352 (11th Cir. Sept.