BACKGROUND
On October 1, a bankruptcy judge ruled that the pension agreement between Stockton, California and Calpers, California’s massive state-run pension fund for public employees, is an executory contract that can be rejected in bankruptcy. Judge Christopher Klein of the Eastern District of California found that California laws designed to protect Calpers from municipal bankruptcies could not be enforced once a city entered bankruptcy.
On Monday, October 6, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order denying the petition for a writ of certiorari in the Jaffe v. Samsung case, also known as the Qimonda case.
Section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code provides creditors with an administrative expense priority claim for value of goods that were received by the debtor in the ordinary course within the 20 days prior to the bankruptcy filing Because section 503(b)(9) affords administrative priority status to an otherwise unsecured prepetition claim, it is strictly construed by courts. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the bankruptcy court’s recent decision in
Throughout the Detroit bankruptcy and the attendant speculation about what role, if any, the collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts that is owned by the city should play, a parallel parlor game has been to try to guess what Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s endgame and motivation really was. He has dropped hints a
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has answered a lingering question about the interpretation of Massachusetts’s fine art consignment law, G.L. c. 104A, § 2. Laying to rest any doubts about whether a written agreement is required at the time of delivery to create a consignment under the statute, the SJC has interpreted the 2006 amendments to the law for the first time and clarified the roles of everyone involved.
In a recent decision from the Delaware bankruptcy court, Judge Christopher S. Sontchi joined the debate over the interpretation of section 547(c)(4)(B) of the Bankruptcy Code, which sets forth the new value defense to a preference claim.
After Syncora Capital settled its objections to the Detroit bankruptcy plan of adjustment, it looked like the battle over the Detroit Institute of Arts collection would subside. Not so fast, it turns out. A major contest looms next week with a remaining creditor, Financial Guaranty Insurance Corporation, over the valuation of the collection. Just to recap, the creditors (including both Syncora and FGIC) submitted a valuation of the entire DIA collection that put the value between $8 billion, performed by Victor Wiener Associates, while DIA and the city advanced an appraisa
Last year, the 112-year old retailer J.C. Penney was regularly in the news – and it was rarely good. The stock was in a free-fall, in the process of dropping from about $20 per share in May 2013 to a low of a little more than $6 dollars per share in late October. Media reports were grim, focusing on the attempt and failure of the former Apple executive Ron Johnson to turn the business around. But now, as we approach the critical holiday season, J.C.
The Supreme Judicial Court, the high court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has answered a certified question from the Bankruptcy Court about the interpretation of Massachusetts’s fine art consignment law, G.L. c. 104A. The case, Eve Plumb et al. v.