Recently, the bankruptcy court presiding over the Energy Futures chapter 11 case issued an opinion analyzing the interplay between an intercreditor agreement’s distribution waterfall and payments to be made under the debtors’ multi-step reorganization plan. The court rejected a secured creditor’s argument that the intercreditor agreement’s distribution waterfall was triggered by one step of that reorganization.

In a unanimous decision affirming the Sixth Circuit, the Supreme Court held that creditors have 14 days to appeal a bankruptcy court’s denial of relief from the automatic stay. In one of the term’s first decisions, Justice Ginsburg’s opinion in Ritzen Group, Inc. v.

A recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit provides additional guidance with respect to jurisdictional disputes that bankruptcy professionals often see in practice. In particular, the Gupta v. Quincy Med. Ctr., 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 9814 (1st Cir. June 2, 2017) case analyzed whether a bankruptcy court had jurisdiction to adjudicate a post-sale dispute among a purchaser of estate assets and former employees of the debtors.

Courts struggled this year to find a balance between state-licensed cannabis activity and the federal right to seek bankruptcy protection under the Bankruptcy Code. During 2019, we had the first circuit-level opinion in the bankruptcy/cannabis space that appeared to open the door to bankruptcy courts, albeit slightly. We also had lower court opinions slamming that door shut. Below, we look at a few of the most important decisions issued throughout 2019 and analyze the current state of the law.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ Garvin Decision

A recent decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals may have muddied the question of the impact of collateral rent assignments on a debtor’s ability to re-organize under chapter 11.

On June 26, 2019, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union published a new EU Restructuring Directive on preventive restructuring frameworks, discharge of debt and disqualifications, and measures to increase the efficiency of procedures concerning restructuring, insolvency and discharge of debt (“Directive”).

This is an extraordinary achievement given the existing differences in restructuring regimes across EU Member States.

On 6 April 2017, new Insolvency Rules came into force which will affect creditors’ rights in most insolvency procedures. More information on the insolvency changes generally are available in this blog post.

Since the early Nineties, Czech insolvency legislation has undergone a number of positive changes. Creditor position improved, including that of secured creditors, and the protection of both the debtor and the bankrupt has also been strengthened. Moreover, with the new Insolvency Act effective from 2008, reorganization began to be more widely used in addressing bankruptcies. In Czech insolvency procedure, however, certain problematic areas still remain. One of them involves frivolous insolvency petitions filed by both creditors and debtors themselves.

There has been quite a lot of discussion over the past few months about the bench rulings issued by Judge Drain of the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York inMomentive Performance Materials (see our extensive coverage in four parts here, 

For a Throwback Thursday, we often go way back, to cases establishing first principles. This time, however, we travel not so far back, but still to a bygone era, the early 80’s. It was a time when the Bankruptcy Code was still new, and judges could interpret it without the weight of much practice and precedent. Often, these cases present the starting point for familiar interpretations that continued to develop in later years, but other times it’s surprising to see a new interpretive opening that, years later, is not thoroughly explored.