The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently held that a creditor of a bankrupt corporation may assert alter ego claims against the corporation’s sole shareholders. The California Court of Appeals for the Second Appellate District not only supports the Ninth Circuit’s decision but has recently taken it one step further, holding that alter ego allegations are not even subject to the automatic bankruptcy stay.
Regional landline network operator Fairpoint Communications is finally poised to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a result of the decision of the Vermont Public Safety Board (VPSB) to approve the company’s amended reorganization plan. Vermont had been the lone holdout among Maine, New Hampshire and 15 other states that had previously endorsed the plan. The reorganization was precipitated largely by the financial burden of FairPoint’s $2.3 billion purchase of New England landlines from Verizon Communications in 2008.
Reclamation claimants have long enjoyed special protections under Bankruptcy Code section 546(c), which recognizes that “the rights and powers of a trustee... are subject to the right of a seller of goods,” including reclamation rights under Section 2-702 of the Uniform Commercial Code. At a minimum, Section 2-702 clearly requires that a reclamation claimant must make demand upon its buyer in order to reclaim its goods and protect its rights. However, Paramount Home Entertainment Inc. v. Circuit City Stores, Inc., 2010 WL 3522089 (ED Va., Sept.
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In CML V, LLC v Bax, the Court of Chancery held that a creditor of JetDirect Aviation Holdings, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company ("JetDirect"), did not have derivative standing to assert breach of fiduciary duty claims against the board of managers of the insolvent JetDirect. The creditors would have had standing if JetDirect were a Delaware corporation, but the Court found that the Delaware LLC Act does not allow an LLC’s creditors to bring derivative claims when a Delaware LLC is insolvent (or at any other time).
Straining under a debt burden in excess of $1 billion, TerreStar Networks filed a petition for Chapter 11 protection with a New York bankruptcy court on Tuesday. Known formerly as Motient Corp., TerreStar is in the midst of deploying a hybrid terrestrial/mobile satellite network that would serve rural and other hard-to-reach areas in the U.S.
- On August 4, 2010, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a Wisconsin federal district court’s ruling on the Wisconsin bankruptcy court’s disposition of three of Telephone and Data Systems’ (TDS) claims, and the FCC’s objections thereto, filed in Airadigm’s Chapter 11 reorganization plan. The principal assets at issue were a series of C- and F-block spectrum licenses for mobile phone service in certain areas of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan that Airadigm had won at auction in the late 1990s.
With the August 4, 2010 auction of the division leading Texas Rangers looming and the memory of last year's bankruptcy sale of the Phoenix Coyotes fresh in our minds, there has been a lot of discussion among bankruptcy professionals about the unique issues that arise when a sports club files for bankruptcy. Generally, sports clubs file bankruptcy for the same reasons as other businesses — as a last resort to save going concern value and/or to avail themselves of some strategic advantage under the Bankruptcy Code.
In a recent decision, SEC v Byers,1 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that district courts possess the authority and discretion to bar the filing of involuntary bankruptcy petitions without the district court’s permission.
On Monday, the Vermont Public Safety Board (VPSB) threw up a roadblock against Fairpoint Communications’ quest to emerge from bankruptcy with the issuance of a 96- page order that rejects the company’s plan of reorganization. Saddled with debt accruing from its $2.3 billion purchase of landline phone assets from Verizon Communications in 2008, Fairpoint—a regional provider of landline telephone services in the states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine—filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October of 2009.