Two recent cases serve as reminders the devil is truly in the details.

Preference actions are, for the most part, insanity. We won’t go on a tirade here. But recently, a ruling brings common sense to the “new value” defense.

Have you ever had to press garlic for a recipe? Or put together a Swedish bookshelf, purchased from a Swedish superstore? Yes, you have – and you may have succeeded, so long as you had a garlic press, or the bag of special Swedish tools respectively. But what if you don’t? Yikes.

Northern District of Oklahoma Chief Bankruptcy Judge Terrence L. Michael’s introduction to the opinion in In re Harrison (2013 WL 6859303) serves as a good introduction to this post:

In today’s turbulent economic climate, it is vital for creditors and debtors to understand the precise boundaries of their rights and duties when an enterprise becomes insolvent. Directors, officers and managers must acknowledge those to whom they owe fiduciary duties and fulfill those duties at the risk of personal liability, while creditors evaluate their potential remedies against misbehaving insiders to collect on defaulted obligations.

Providing an exception to the axiom that no good deed goes unpunished, a Texas bankruptcy court recently declared nondischargeable a debt owed to a guarantor who had been forced to pay the debtor’s defaulted student loan.

We are all very used to (and very bored of) the on-going debate of what actually constitutes “the media” or “legitimate news.” In most instances, this sort of debate pits exclusive, Columbia-educated, “proper” journalists against those who have large on-line followings and eschew any association with a Dickensian-era newspaper.

A decision rendered during the sometimes peaceful interlude between Christmas and New Year’s is worth reading, and heeding. Hurston v. Anzo (In re Hurston), Adv. Proc. No. 15-2026 (Bankr. N.D. Ga. Dec. 27, 2016) is a helpful reminder to anyone representing lenders or creditors which are hell-bent-for-leather to pursue a non-dischargeability claim against a debtor that submits a false written statement (e.g., a personal financial statement) to obtain credit.

Individual debtors with old tax debts relating to late-filed tax returns may be surprised to find that those tax debts may not be dischargeable under section 523(a) of the Bankruptcy Code due to the lateness of the tax filing. There is a current Circuit split regarding whether a late tax filing constitutes a “return” at all, which is critical to the dischargeability inquiry. The Ninth Circuit weighed in last week in In re Smith, 2016 WL 3749156 (9th Cir. July 13, 2016), further cementing the split.

There are many tenants that are, shall we say, “problem children.” They pay late, open late, breach, junk up your strip or building, threaten, the works. Sometimes, the landlord finds it easier just to reach a lease termination agreement with such a tenant, with the parties walking away with a mutual release. If the lease is below market, or the landlord is really motivated to move this tenant along, the landlord even provides some “keys money” to terminate the lease.