Theresa V. Brown-Edwards, Ryan M. Murphy
Charles McSwain, a 53% member of Hawks Prairie Casino, LLC, a Washington LLC, filed a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in 2007. Hawks Prairie operates a gambling casino in Thurston County, Washington.
And now for the question:
Q: Could my privacy policy hinder the liquidation of my company's assets?
The head of the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) Consumer Protection Bureau, David Vladeck, recently questioned the planned sale of email addresses and other information for about 48 million consumers by Borders Group, Inc. (“Borders”) as part of that entity’s bankruptcy proceeding.3 In a public letter, Mr. Vladeck noted that the data held by Borders included records of merchandise purchased (video and books) that could be perceived as personal by many customers.
Borders has long collected personal information from customers and promised that such information would not be disclosed without consent. In light of that and Borders' current bankruptcy proceedings, the FTC has sent a letter to the consumer privacy ombudsman overseeing the Borders bankruptcy that seeks the protection of customer personal information.
On September 21, 2011, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck sent a letter to the court appointed consumer privacy ombudsman in the Borders Group, Inc. (Borders) bankruptcy proceeding advising against the sale of Border's customer information absent customer consent or significant restrictions on the transfer and use of the information.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed a bankruptcy court’s decision refusing to confirm debtors’ reorganization plan that included auction procedures that forbade secured creditors from “credit bidding” for the assets. Inre River Road Hotel Partners, LLC, No. 10-3597, 2011 WL 2547615 (7th Cir. June 28, 2011). In that case, the debtors (owners of various hotel properties) proposed a plan of reorganization that included auctioning certain properties encumbered by security interests.
In this memorandum opinion, the Court of Chancery held that a retiring member of a limited liability company was entitled to his proportionate share of the liquidation value, rather than the going concern value, of the company.
The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, overseeing the bankruptcy cases of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (“LBHI”) and its affiliated debtors (collectively, the “Debtors”), entered an order on Aug.
While secured creditors are entitled to special rights in bankruptcy, those rights may differ depending on whether creditors have a statutory or consensual lien on their collateral. This is primarily because section 552(a) of the Bankruptcy Code provides, in part, that “property acquired by the estate or by the debtor after the commencement of the case is not subject to any lien resulting from any security agreement . . .