On September 11, 2019, the Delaware district court affirmed the bankruptcy court’s decision to expunge a proof of claim filed by a claims trader in the Woodbridge Group of Companies, LLC bankruptcy case.

In the recent case of BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA & others [2016] EWHC 1686, the High Court has held for the first time that a dividend can be challenged as a transaction entered into at an undervalue within the meaning of section 423(1) of the Insolvency Act 1986 (the “IA”).

The Facts

The facts of the case are long and complex but for present purposes the pertinent facts are as follows.

Arjo Wiggins Appleton Limited (now Windward Prospects Limited) (“AWA”) was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sequana SA (“SSA”).

We’re still a month away from Halloween, but TCPAWorld has just become even scarier.

I have frequently remarked on the unfairness of individual corporate officers being held individually and personally liable for TCPA violations committed by corporate entities. That sometimes means liability well into the millions of dollars in personal exposure for individuals based upon actions taken by companies these individuals helped run. Well imagine, for a moment, if all that exposure were deemed non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Horrifying right?

A recent decision of the Slovak Courts suggest that if main proceedings have been opened in one member state and the debtor has assets in Slovakia, the insolvency practitioner in the main proceedings must act quickly and sell those assets before secondary proceedings are opened in Slovakia, otherwise he runs the risk of losing the assets to the secondary estate. Legal title to the assets must have passed to the buyer before the secondary proceedings are opened; it is not enough just for contracts to have been exchanged.

We have written before about the virtual dead end faced by marijuana companies who try to seek protection in the bankruptcy courts. Almost uniformly, bankruptcy courts have shut their doors on marijuana companies, including their landlords and suppliers.

Last week, our post “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” discussed a Texas bankruptcy court decision rejecting efforts by debtor Sam Wyly to claim as exempt a number of offshore private annuities.

We recently published a blog identifying issues which cryptocurrency pose in insolvencies; not least identifying and classifying it, how to take control of it and realising value for the insolvency estate.

Given cryptocurrencies are global, the question of how to classify cryptocurrency on insolvency is not limited to just one jurisdiction.

The bankruptcy courts have a long history of being willing to use their judicial power under the Bankruptcy Code to prevent perceived efforts by debtors to inappropriately shield their assets from creditors. This is true even when the debtors employ structures and devices that are complex and crafted in seeming compliance with applicable law.

In Travelers Cas. & Sur. Co. of Am. v. PG&E, 549 U.S. 443 (2007), the Supreme Court held that bankruptcy law does not disallow a post-petition unsecured claim for attorney’s fees to the extent such claim is authorized by a pre-petition contract and not otherwise expressly disallowed. That pronouncement should have stopped all future litigation over the issue. That has not been the case.

As noted in prior posts, the Ninth Circuit opened the door, albeit narrowly, to cannabis company bankruptcies when it issued its opinion in Garvin v. Cook Invs. NW on May 2, 2019. In Garvin, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the confirmation of a plan of reorganization proposed by the lessor to a marijuana growing operation.