Here’s a hard-knocks rule:
- When you can’t or won’t explain the true reason for taking a position in negotiations or litigation, distrust and suspicion of the worst-possible motives will follow.
An Exhibit A for this rule is an opinion issued February 9, 2023, in In re Heaven’s Landing, LLC, Case No. 20-21350, Northern Georgia Bankruptcy Court (Doc. 145).
Here are illustrative statements from that opinion:
What’s an ABC? If you ask ChatGPT, “ABC” is an acronym that can have multiple meanings, depending on the context—for example, referring to the alphabet. But here we are talking about a type of business liquidation process in the United States known as an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (“ABC”). An ABC is governed by state law and has long been viewed as an alternative to a liquidation under Chapter 7 of the US Bankruptcy Code.
Summary
“Consistently, the highest percentage of filings in the federal docket is bankruptcy cases, which can be up to 75% of filings.”
That’s a conclusion by the authors of a 2014 study.[Fn. 1]
Bankruptcy-Specific
Here are bankruptcy-specific details and explanations from that same study:
On January 13, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court grants the Petition for a writ of certiorari in Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin, Supreme Court Case No. 22-227, and on January 31, 2023, the Supreme Court enters this order therein: “Set for Argument on Monday, April 24, 2023.”
In a January 2023 opinion,1 the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court overseeing the bankruptcy case of Latin American airline Avianca and certain of its affiliates sanctioned over 150 of the airline’s Brazilian and Columbian creditors who had filed proofs of claim in the bankruptcy case finding t
Battered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the decline in passengers travelling to Hong Kong, Hong Kong Airlines (HKA) has become the latest carrier to undergo a debt restructuring. Its restructuring plan was sanctioned by the English court on 9 December 2022 and its scheme of arrangement was sanctioned by the Hong Kong court on 14 December 2022.
In summary:
Johnson & Johnson (“J&J”) has, for a very long time, produced and sold a baby powder product containing talc—a mineral milled into fine powder that includes traces of asbestos.
In recent years, that baby powder product has spawned a torrent of lawsuits alleging that it causes ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.
Currently, over 38,000 ovarian cancer actions and over 400 mesothelioma actions are pending against J&J. Expectations are for thousands more to be filed in decades to come.
The phrase “projected disposable income” is a plan confirmation standard in all reorganization chapters of the Bankruptcy Code for individuals and businesses:
Bankruptcy benefits for individual debtors are a tough sell—always have been. That’s because no one likes bankruptcy—unless they need it.
But relieving people from debts in unfortunate circumstances is essential to our collective way of life in these United States. That’s always been true.
What follows is the third of three installments on some history of bankruptcy laws through the ages, beginning with ancient times—and to the present in these United States.
Bankruptcy Code