You don’t see this very often: a dispute over the confidentiality of mediation communications.

But such a dispute recently happened in In re Barretts Minerals, Inc., Case No. 23-90794, Southern Texas Bankruptcy Court. And the result is this: mediation confidentiality remains alive and well.

In re Barretts Minerals is a mass-tort asbestos case. And Debtor is pursuing confirmation of a bankruptcy plan under § 524(6). Mediation efforts are in progress.

Bygge- og anlægsbranchen har i de seneste år oplevet en kraftig stigning i antallet af konkurser og toppede foreløbigt i 2023 med hele 1.282 erklærede konkurser. Da konkurserne ofte er forbundet med store tab, hvis de indtræder under et igangværende byggeri, har tendensen i stigende grad aktualiseret en belysning af de muligheder, der er for at sikre sig imod sådanne tab.

Bygge- og anlægsbranchen har i de seneste år oplevet en kraftig stigning i antallet af konkurser og toppede foreløbigt i 2023 med hele 1.282 erklærede konkurser. Da konkurserne ofte er forbundet med store tab, hvis de indtræder under et igangværende byggeri, har tendensen i stigende grad aktualiseret en belysning af de muligheder, der er for at sikre sig imod sådanne tab.

Bankruptcies with large tort claims are common:

• some involve a limited number of claimants (e.g., a drunk driver hits a bus or a restaurant serves bad food one evening); and
• others have large numbers of claimants, some of whom won’t even be known for at least another decade (e.g., asbestos cases).

Often in tort bankruptcies, the total amount of claims overwhelms the debtor’s ability to pay: i.e., existing assets, insurance coverages and projected future income streams are, simply, insufficient.

Where a bankruptcy order has been made and the Official Receiver/trustee in bankruptcy has been appointed, how should their fees and expenses be dealt with if the bankruptcy order is later set aside following the debtor’s successful appeal? Further, if the bankruptcy proceedings were commenced in breach of an exclusive jurisdiction clause should costs be awarded on an indemnity basis?

These questions were recently considered by the Court of Appeal in Re Guy Kwok-Hung Lam [2023] HKCA 1099. Three key points can be gleaned from the judgment:-

Nuo Ji, Lingqi Wang, Jessica Li and Sylvia Zhang, Fangda Partners

This is an extract from the 2024 edition of GRR's The Asia-Pacific Restructuring Review. The whole publication is available here.

In summary

In practice, bankruptcy of a defendant employer during court proceedings related to employee receivables may be confusing for both the parties of a dispute and the courts handling the proceedings.

The Court of Appeal has recently referred to established case law that the court will only interfere with the act of an officeholder “if he has done something so utterly unreasonable and absurd that no reasonable man would have done it”.

While the judge in the lower court had not made any error of law, on the facts there were identifiable flaws in the judge's reasoning that the trustees' decision not to join in the proceedings was perverse.

The judge had failed to recognise that:

Following are this week’s summaries of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of September 4, 2023.

In AssessNet Inc. v. Ferro Estate, the Court set aside an order dismissing the action, finding that the summary judgment motion judge had erred in determining the issue of discoverability of a claim against a trustee in bankruptcy.

Torgersrud v Lightstone is a family law decision where the Court dismissed an appeal from an order setting aside a marriage contract entered into in Quebec in 1988.

On June 27, 2022, Three Arrows Capital (“3AC”), a crypto hedge fund, commenced liquidation proceedings in the British Virgin Islands and thereafter filed recognition proceedings in, among other countries, the United States and Singapore.