In Heritage Pacific Financial LLC v. Machuca, 2012 DJDAR 16803 (2012), the US Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit decided an interesting attorney fee case arising in the commercial litigation context. The fee award was given to the debtor arising from adversary proceedings initiated by a creditor, a commercial bank.
Existing law identifies particular property of a debtor that is exempt from enforcement of a money judgment. Existing law provides for the adjustment of these exemption amounts based on changes in the annual California Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. Those exemptions are available to a debtor in a federal bankruptcy case, unless the debtor elects certain alternative exemptions available under federal bankruptcy law.
Last week the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved debtor-American Airlines’ motion to enter into a secured financing transaction and repay certain pre-petition aircraft financing without paying make-whole premiums. The indenture trustee sought to ground the motion by asserting that the make-whole had to be paid, but it was the indenture trustee, not American, that crashed and burned.
CASE SNAPSHOT
Bankers and their counsel should note that during its December lame-duck session, the Ohio General Assembly passed the Ohio Legacy Trust Act (Am. Sub. H.B. 479), which will go into effect March 27, 2013. The Act creates borrower-friendly provisions prohibiting the use of so-called “Cherryland” insolvency carve-outs in nonrecourse loan documents which will be of interest to all financial institutions engaged in commercial lending in Ohio.
The United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Montana in connection with In re Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission Cooperative, Inc. held that electricity was a “good” for purposes of section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code. That means that anyone sells electricity to a person who later goes bankrupt is entitled to a high-priority administrative expense claim for the value of the electricity delivered in the 20 days prior to the bankruptcy.
On Nov. 28, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in In re Vitro S.A.B. de C.V. issued a groundbreaking decision under Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, which provides the mechanics for U.S. bankruptcy courts to deal with cross-border insolvency proceedings. Although deference to judgments of foreign courts is the norm under Chapter 15, in this instance the Fifth Circuit refused to enforce a court-approved Mexican plan of reorganization on the ground that it contained non-consensual non-debtor releases of noteholders’ claims against the debtor’s non-debtor subsidiaries.
When a debtor rejects an executory contract, Section 365(n) of the Bankruptcy Code allows a licensee of intellectual property to retain certain rights under the rejected contract. An important question arises, therefore, whether a particular agreement indeed involves a license. In a recent decision, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has reaffirmed the definition of a license as “a mere waiver of the right to sue by the patentee.” In re Spansion, Inc., 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 26131, *7 (3d Cir. Dec. 21, 2012) (citing De Forest Radio Tel. & Tel. Co. v.
Are golf course revenues "rents"?
A golf course may look like a solid piece of collateral. After all, golfers will pay good money to play and the green fees and driving range fees golfers pay to play the course will generate a revenue stream. This revenue stream can be pledged to a lender and used to support loans to the owner of the course. Lenders love to finance a business that generates a steady revenue stream, making a golf course look like an attractive form of collateral.