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.

In re SJT Ventures, LLC, 2010 WL 3342206 (Bankr. N.D. Texas 2010)

CASE SNAPSHOT

Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors v Credit Suisse (In re Champion Enterprises, Inc.), 2010 WL 3522132 (Bankr. D. Del. 2010)

CASE SNAPSHOT

In re River Road Hotel Partners, LLC, et al., Case No. 09-B-30029 (Bankr. N.D. Ill. 2010)

CASE SNAPSHOT

In re Young Broadcasting, Inc., et al., 430 B.R. 99 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2010)

CASE SNAPSHOT

In In re Rodriguez, No. 09-2724 (3rd Cir. Dec 23, 2010), a three-judge panel for the Third Circuit considered whether an automatic stay under the Bankruptcy Code prevented a mortgage servicer from accounting for a pre-petition shortage on a mortgage escrow account in its post-petition calculation of the bankrupt debtors’ future monthly escrow payments. The majority held that the bankruptcy stay did prohibit such conduct by the loan servicer.

When defaults spiked for loans underwritten by commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), many Texas attorneys sought state court-appointed receivers for commercial real estate assets.

Placing a struggling property in receivership has long been a remedy available for lenders, but Texas' relatively expedited and inexpensive nonjudicial foreclosure process limited the remedy's practical value for traditional lenders.

In nearly every bankruptcy proceeding there is some constituency that ends up having its claim or interest impaired. Not surprisingly, therefore, these same constituencies would like to avoid that outcome by restricting the debtor’s ability to commence bankruptcy in the first place.

Can a debtor seeking debtor-in-possession (“DIP”) financing under Section 364 of the Bankruptcy Code grant a lender a lien on a leasehold interest in the face of an express anti-hypothecation provision in the underlying lease?

The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Sixth Circuit (BAP) recently held that a mortgagee that held a collateral assignment of rents on property in which the debtor had no equity was not adequately protected by cash collateral orders entered by the bankruptcy court that granted the lender a "replacement lien" on post-petition rents.