Summary
“Creative destruction” occurs when something new kills off whatever existed before it.
IPhone Example
Just think, for example, of all the creative destruction that the iPhone has wrought! It has destroyed businesses that provided telephones and phone books, cameras and film, audio recordings and players, newspapers and newsstands, and related services.
City of Chester is the oldest city in Pennsylvania, incorporated as a borough in 1701 and as a city in 1866, and is located on the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Wilmington.
Unfortunately, the City is also in Chapter 9—having filed bankruptcy on November 10, 2022.
The City’s bankruptcy filing causes a ruckus because:
Summary
Summary
The U.S. Supreme Court does not like bankruptcy benefits for individual debtors. It really doesn’t.
An example from a couple years ago is Fulton v. City of Chicago, where the U.S. Supreme Court finds a way to declare:
On February 13, 2023, Ultra Petroleum Corporation (“Ultra”) filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the US Supreme Court seeking review of the Fifth Circuit’s October 2022 ruling that, in solvent-debtor cases, debtors must pay unsecured creditors applicable contractual make-whole premiums and postpetition interest at contractual default rates in order for such unsecured creditors to be considered unimpaired.
Summary
Can a corporate debtor be denied a Subchapter V discharge under § 523(a), despite this § 523(a) language (emphasis added):
- “A discharge under section . . . 1192 [Subchapter V] . . . does not discharge an individual debtor from . . . ”?
A recent Bankruptcy Court opinion (in Avion Funding) says, essentially, this: “No! You can’t paint over explicit statutory language.”[Fn. 1]
Such recent opinion:
The U.S. Supreme Court issues its first-ever opinion—of any type—on August 3, 1791. [Fn. 1] But it does not address a bankruptcy question for quite some time thereafter. In fact, the first U.S. law on the subject of bankruptcy did not exist until the Bankruptcy Act of 1800.
First Bankruptcy Opinion