The failure of debtors to accurately list and value assets in their bankruptcy schedules is certainly not a new phenomenon. Recently, however, we are witnessing an increase in bankruptcy cases where debtors are using clever and deliberate means to omit assets or disguise the true value of their assets in an attempt to thwart recovery by creditors. While the U.S. trustee's or a creditor's remedy for such bad acts is to seek a denial of the debtor's discharge under 11 U.S.C.

1 PGDOCS\6505199.2 2015 Georgia Corporation and Business Organization Case Law Developments Michael P. Carey Bryan Cave LLP Fourteenth Floor 1201 West Peachtree Street, N.W. Atlanta, GA 30309 (404) 572-6600 March 22, 2016 This paper is not intended as legal advice for any specific person or circumstance, but rather a general treatment of the topics discussed. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author only and not Bryan Cave LLP. The author would like to thank Tom Richey for his continued support, advice and assistance with this paper.

On April 1, a bevy of dollar amounts set forth in the Bankruptcy Code will change. Some of these are quite important to substantive relief, and others are quite important to making sure you don’t look bad in front of the client or your favorite (least favorite?) judge. We have Section 104 of the Bankruptcy Code to thank for this malpractice-inducing enterprise, which we enjoy every three years. See 11 U.S.C. § 104 (a) (“On April 1, 1998, and at each 3-year interval ending on April 1 thereafter, each dollar amount in effect under sections . . . shall be adjusted . . . .”).

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.) 

Today, Sinbad’s restaurant looks like a shipwreck next to San Francisco’s Ferry Building. A demolition crew is on site and Sinbad’s is in bankruptcy court. The classic restaurant-bar recently lost a series of legal battles that ultimately shut it down after 40 years of continuous operation.

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.

On Aug. 4, 2015, in City of Concord, New Hampshire v. Northern New England Telephone Operations LLC (In re Northern New England Telephone Operations LLC), No. 14-3381 (2nd Cir. Aug. 4, 2015), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit addressed the circumstances under which a creditor's lien on the property of a debtor may be extinguished through a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization.

On November 5, 2015, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California issued a “Memorandum re Plan Confirmation” in In re Bowie, Case No. 15-10144 (Bankr. N.D. Cal. Nov.

Pursuant to Section 727 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, an individual Chapter 7 debtor may receive a discharge "from all debts that arose before the date of the order for relief under this chapter." A Chapter 11 or Chapter 13 debtor may receive similar relief pursuant to Sections 1141 and 1328(b), respectively. Under any chapter, this discharge serves the Bankruptcy Code's principal goal of relieving a debtor from his or her prepetition obligations and providing the debtor with a "fresh start" on emergence from bankruptcy.