On December 5, 2018, Senior Care Centers, LLC and 120 subsidiaries (collectively, the “Debtors”) filed for chapter 11 relief in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas. The Debtors are one of the largest providers of skilled nursing services in the country, providing care on a daily basis to approximately 9,000 patients. The Debtors’ facilities include nursing, living and hospice facilities, which are located throughout Texas and Louisiana.

We at the BCLP Global Insolvency and Restructuring Developments (the GRID) continue to watch and cover the growing jurisprudence of trustees seeking to recover pre-petition tuition payments made by a debtor parent to support his or her child’s college education.

The recent decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in In re Provider Meds, L.L.C. is a stark reminder to chapter 7 trustees that they have an affirmative obligation to examine a debtor’s assets. A trustee’s failure to conduct a sufficient and timely examination may deprive the estate of significant value.

In IDEA Boardwalk, LLC v. Revel Entertainment Group, LLC (In re Revel AC Inc.), Case No. 17-3607, –F.3d–, 2018 WL 6259316 (3rd Cir. Nov. 30, 2018), the Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently enforced a tenant’s right to offset rent under a rejected lease of real property, pursuant to section 365(h) of the Bankruptcy Code and the doctrine of equitable recoupment.

Facts

In IDEA Boardwalk, LLC v. Revel Entertainment Group, LLC (In re Revel AC Inc.), Case No. 17-3607, --F.3d--, 2018 WL 6259316 (3rd Cir. Nov. 30, 2018), the Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently enforced a tenant’s right to offset rent under a rejected lease of real property, pursuant to section 365(h) of the Bankruptcy Code and the doctrine of equitable recoupment.

Facts

Debtor Revel AC, Inc. (“Revel”) owned a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It filed for chapter 11 relief in 2014.

Last week, the United States District Court for the District of Delaware (the “Court”) reversed a 2015 decision by the Delaware Bankruptcy Court (the “Bankruptcy Court”) disallowing the portion of an unsecured claim filed by appellant Wilmington Trust Company (“WTC”) for postpetition attorneys’ fees and costs incurred under an indenture in connection with the In re Tribune Media Co. chapter 11 cases.

It happens all too often: a company declares bankruptcy and then the company’s bank, vendors, or other creditors are forced to return a payment that the company made before declaring bankruptcy because the payment was a “fraudulent transfer” under the bankruptcy code. When that happens, the creditor typically files a proof of claim in the bankruptcy case to recover its payment. To succeed, the creditor must show that it provided some benefit to the debtor in exchange for its payment.

According to the International Trademark Association (“INTA”), “whether a debtor-licensor can terminate a trademark license by rejection, thereby ‘taking back’ trademark rights it has licensed and precluding its licensee from using the trademark” is “the most significant unresolved legal issue in trademark licensing.” It likely will not stay unresolved for much longer; on October 26, 2018, the United States Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari to resolve this specific issue as part of the Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology LLC case.

Although it may be difficult to define precisely what an “executory contract” is (with the Bankruptcy Code providing no definition), I think most bankruptcy lawyers feel how the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously felt about obscenity--we know one when we see it. Determining that a patent license was executory in the first place was an issue in the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision in RPD Holdings, L.L.C. v.

In Claridge Associates, LLC, et al. v. Anthony Schepis (In re Pursuit Capital Management, LLC), Adv. P. No. 16-50083 (LSS) (Bankr. D. Del. Nov. 2, 2018), the Honorable Laurie Silverstein held that a chapter 7 trustee was authorized to sell the right to pursue fraudulent conveyance claims to third parties, pursuant to section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. In doing so, the Court extended the Third Circuit’s holding in Official Committee Of Unsecured Creditors of Cybergenics Corp. v. Chinery, 330 F.3d 548 (3d. Cir. 2003) (en banc) to chapter 7 cases.