In litigation, obtaining a judgment is step one. Step two – often as, if not more, difficult than winning a lawsuit – is collection. In a short, interesting Memorandum of Decision and Order (the “Decision”), Judge Dales of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Michigan (the “Bankruptcy Court”), writes about some of the practical and legal considerations involved with pursuing collection of a bankruptcy court judgment.
There has been much discussion in the media in the past year about the massive amount of professional fees that have been wracked up during the City of Detroit's Chapter 9 bankruptcy. There is always great interest - and debate - about such fees due to the nature of the process: insolvent individuals or companies with no place left to turn file for bankruptcy, creditors take a "haircut" on their claims, and the lawyers get paid. Or so the story goes. As with any complex process, though, there is plenty of nuance that gets lost in the wash, and often is more to the story.
On June 25, 2014, the United States Supreme Court ruled that cloud-based television-streaming service, Aereo, violated U.S. copyright law and its subsequent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing has come to a dramatic conclusion. We have followed this case throughout its lifecycle, and updated this blog with posts like this one to keep you up-to-date on its implications for copyright and telecommunications regulations.
The Spanish Insolvency Act has been reformed several times recently to solve technical problems and to facilitate the continuity of economically or operationally viable companies. In the final quarter of 2014 alone, two partial reforms of the act were approved.
Royal Decree-Law 11/2014, of September 5, on urgent measures in insolvency matters
On March 7, 2014, the State Council released its Opinion on Further Optimizing the Market Environment for Corporate Merger and Restructuring (Guo Fa [2014] No. 14, “Circular 14”), to improve the institutional mechanisms and policies that encourage corporate mergers and restructuring. Circular 14 gives overall guidance on special treatments for merger and corporate restructuring transactions with regard to enterprise income tax (“EIT”), land value-added tax, value-added tax and business tax.
The Supreme Court confirmed the lower-court judgments that had rescinded the payments made to the managing director through remuneration, as the bylaw requisite to create the right to receive it had not been met, as well as payments made to shareholders through dividends, differentiating between the resolution of the meeting to distribute dividends and the payment of these dividends.
At the end of October 2014, as insolvency administrators of Establiments Miró, we carried out the sale of the insolvent company’s production unit to the Swiss fund Springwater Capital LLC.
This transaction was successful, resulting in maintaining 476 jobs, preserving 67 stores, and bringing income of €4,505,937 for the insolvency (€3,000,000 for the price and €1,505,937 for recovering the amount of the bonds to be substituted by the purchaser).
The Supreme Court repeated its criterion on classifying as insolvency claims any leasing installments arising after the declaration of insolvency, and interpreted the amendment introduced into article 61.2 of the Insolvency Act (“IA”) by the 2011 reform.
Decision of the Supreme Court of Justice, No 117-B/1999.P1.S1., of 2015-01-08 Transforming companies – Partner – Resignation – Liquidation of the company – Judicial ruling – Feasibility – Decision
In this decision, the Supreme Court of Justice (“STJ”) was asked to give ruling on the feasibility of the decision that was presented as an enforceable title, which was delivered within a special procedure of liquidation of an equity interest presented by a creditor partner against a debtor company.
The Madrid Senior Commercial Judges have published the conclusions of the meetings held on November 7 and 21 on the unification of applicable criteria of the reforms of the Insolvency Act enacted by Royal Decree-Law 11/201415 and Act 17/2014.16