A receiver can be an important tool when dealing with a troubled loan or asset.

Value is the central feature of any real estate restructuring, whether you are a debtor in need of cash, a creditor looking to recover collateral or an equity holder considering an additional investment.

The recent case of In re Tousa, Inc. (Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Tousa, Inc., v. Citicorp North America, Inc., Adv. Pro. No. 08-1435-JKO (Bankr. S.D. Fla., October 13, 2009)) has attracted considerable attention – and dread – in the banking and legal communities.

Anyone who obtains title insurance, whether as an owner or a lender, should be aware of a recent abrupt and significant change in title insurance practices across the country. Title companies have recently stated that they will no longer delete creditors’ rights exclusions from, or add affirmative creditors’ rights coverage as an endorsement to, any of their issued title policies.

On January 15, 2010, in In re Reliant Energy Channelview LP, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware denying payment of a $15 million break-up fee to the initial bidder of a power plant in conjunction with the debtor’s Section 363 bankruptcy asset sale. The Court based its ruling on the fact that it did not consider the fee necessary to preserve the value of the bankruptcy estate.

Rather than immediately commencing foreclosure proceedings, lenders and servicers (acting on behalf of the lender) are seeking the judicial appointment of receivers with greater frequency when commercial real estate workout negotiations fail to produve the desired results and the borrower is not otherwise prepared to "turn over the keys."

In Dumont v. Ford Motor Credit Company, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirms the Bankruptcy Code does not protect a debtor’s personal property collateral if the debtor fails to commit to redeem, reaffirm or assume the underlying loan—even if the debtor continues timely to make loan payments.

The Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware has issued a decision concluding that company-paid medical coverage offered as part of an employee severance package is a “retiree benefit” that cannot be unilaterally modified by the company in bankruptcy, except as provided under Section 1114 of the Bankruptcy Code.

The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled that an environmental clean-up obligation under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, even when the debtor no longer has any internal clean-up operations and would have to contract a third party to provide such services at significant cost.

On August 11, 2009, Judge Gropper of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York denied motions to dismiss bankruptcy petitions of several special-purpose entity subsidiaries (SPEs) of General Growth Properties, Inc. (GGP) that were solvent, financially healthy companies structured to be remote from the bankruptcy risks of GGP and its other affiliates.