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The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, (“the Court”) held in In re John Joseph Louis Johnson, III, Case No. 14-57104, 2016 WL 1719149, that a creditor violated the automatic stay by seeking to enforce an arbitration award against nondebtor co-defendants. The automatic stay applies not only to stay actions against the debtor personally but also prohibits “any act to … exercise control over property of the [debtor’s bankruptcy] estate.” 11 U.S.C.

In Chan Siew Lee Jannie v Australia and  New  Zealand Banking Group  Ltd  [2016] SGCA 23,  the Singapore Court of Appeal was faced with the issue of whether a statutory demand issued to a guarantor would be deemed defective and liable to be set aside if it did not include the details of a pledge given by the  principal debtor.

In a recent decision Peh Yeng Yok v Tembusu Systems Pte Ltd (formerly known  as  Tembusu Terminals Pte Ltd) and others [2016] SGHC 36, Judicial Commissioner Chua Lee Ming, sitting in the High Court, elaborated on the standard required to justify a search order (also known as an Anton Piller order). The Court emphasised in particular, that the onus was on the party seeking the search order to  show that  there is  a  real  possibility that the defendants will otherwise destroy documents that are relevant to the proceedings.

Adding to the unsettled body of case law on the enforceability of prepetition waivers of the automatic stay, on April 27, 2016, the U.S.

In In re Zair, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49032 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 12, 2016), the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York became the latest to take sides on the emerging issue of “forced vesting” through a chapter 13 plan. After analyzing Bankruptcy Code §§ 1322(b)(9) and 1325(a)(5), the court concluded that a chapter 13 debtor could not, through a chapter 13 plan, force a mortgagee to take title to the mortgage collateral.

Background

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.

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.

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.