The Senate Judiciary Committee in February approved Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons to head the Subcommittee on Bankruptcy and the Courts for the 113th Congress. This gives Coons oversight of the nation’s bankruptcy court system, as well as court administration and management, judicial rules and procedures, the creation of new courts and judgeships, and legal reform and liability issues.

In Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, the absolute priority rule requires a debtor’s creditors be paid in full before equity investors receive any value. However, existing equity investors occasionally seek to invest new money in the plan of reorganization process and argue that such investment justifies retention of equity in the reorganized company; equity which otherwise would pass to impaired creditors.

A recent ruling in the American Airlines bankruptcy case enforcing an automatic acceleration upon bankruptcy provision serves as a reminder that the enforceability of so-called ipso facto provisions in debt instruments remains an unsettled, forum-dependent question.      

On February 13, 2013, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved a stipulation between LightSquared and, among others, its lenders to extend until July 15, 2013 LightSquared’s exclusive right to file a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization. That right was due to expire on January 31, 2013, and then was extended until the court ruled on LightSquared’s motion to extend that date.

• On January 22, 2013, following a 10-day bench trial, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas agreed with Verizon that its former subsidiary, Idearc, Inc., was not insolvent on November 17, 2006, the day Verizon spun it off to become a separate entity. The plaintiff – the litigation trustee of the Idearc bankruptcy estate – brought this case claiming that Verizon spun Idearc off to bury its unprofitable Yellow Pages business unit and thereby take the losses of that unit off Verizon’s books.

When a debtor rejects an executory contract, Section 365(n) of the Bankruptcy Code allows a licensee of intellectual property to retain certain rights under the rejected contract. An important question arises, therefore, whether a particular agreement indeed involves a license. In a recent decision, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has reaffirmed the definition of a license as “a mere waiver of the right to sue by the patentee.” In re Spansion, Inc., 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 26131, *7 (3d Cir. Dec. 21, 2012) (citing De Forest Radio Tel. & Tel. Co. v.

This is a follow up to our recent blog post discussing then pending Michigan legislation known as the “Local Financial Stability and Choice Act” or Public Act 436 (the “Financial Stability Act”), which will replace Public Act 72 and overhaul Michigan’s emergency manager law.  On December 27, 2012, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Financial Stability Act into law.

Lest you thought you had heard the end of the Stern v. Marshall debate, two recent circuit court decisions remind us that Stern is alive and influential. In October, the Sixth Circuit weighed in on a bankruptcy court’s constitutional authority where it discharged certain fraudulent debts and awarded damages. In early December, the Ninth Circuit performed a similar constitutional analysis where the bankruptcy court decided a fraudulent transfer action against a noncreditor of the bankruptcy estate.

With an increasing number of businesses operating without regard to borders in today’s global economy, the importance of understanding Chapter 15 — the Bankruptcy Code provisions instructing the cooperation between the United States and courts of foreign lands involved in cross-border insolvency cases — has never been greater. This advisory will touch on the scope of Chapter 15 and its attempt to balance comity and domestic legal policy, as highlighted in the recent Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Ad Hoc Group of Vitro Noteholders v. Vitro SAB de CV, No.

Detroit’s increasingly distressed financial condition has created a dynamic and rapidly evolving situation where the potential of a Chapter 9 filing appears to be the subject of renewed discussion and legislative attention.  In particular, state legislation providing Detroit a menu of options for addressing its finances appears headed to enactment this month.  Although such legislation includes one option expressly protective of debt service payments on Detroit’s public debt, several of the options may lead to a Chapter 9 filing as a first or last resort.