On March 12, West Coast Life Insurance Co. added civil conspiracy and several violations of Florida law to a complaint alleging that an investment company, several insurance brokers and individual policyholders engaged in an illegal stranger-owned life insurance (STOLI) scheme. The amended complaint alleges that Park Venture Advisors masterminded and implemented the plan, which involved the sale of individual life insurance policies to private investors, while Wells Fargo Delaware Trust Co.
The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania recently found that a bankruptcy trustee could not either pierce the corporate veil of a limited liability company to reach the owners of the LLC, nor could the trustee “reverse-pierce” the corporate veil of the owners of the LLC to reach a separate restaurant business that they owned.
The Supreme Court of Delaware recently held that creditors of insolvent Delaware limited liability companies (LLCs) lack standing to bring derivative suits on behalf of the LLCs.
In March 2010, CML V brought both derivative and direct claims against the present and former managers of JetDirect Aviation Holdings LLC in the Court of Chancery after JetDirect defaulted on its loan obligations to CML. The Vice Chancellor dismissed all the claims, finding that, as a creditor, CML lacked standing to bring derivative claims on behalf of JetDirect, and CML appealed.
In a case of first impression in Texas, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas held that the former majority member of a chapter 11 LLC debtor had to relinquish control of the LLC's Facebook page and Twitter account because they were property of the LLC's bankruptcy estate. In re CTLI, LLC, Case No. 14-33564, 2015 WL 1588085 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. April 3, 2015). CTLI, LLC was a Texas gun store and shooting range doing business as Tactical Firearms.
Two recent opinions from separate federal courts of appeal upheld the dismissal of lawsuits by sophisticated investors that suffered losses in the auction rate securities ("ARS") market against the securities broker-dealers that allegedly fraudulently induced the purchase of the ARS.1
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in In re Philadelphia Newspapers LLC,1 has ruled that secured creditors do not have a right, as a matter of law, to credit bid their claims when their collateral is sold under a plan of reorganization. The Third Circuit held that secured creditors may be barred from credit bidding where a debtor's reorganization plan provides secured creditors with the "indubitable equivalent" of their secured interest in the assets. The court's ruling follows a similar ruling last year by the U.S.
On March 22, 2010, a three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a highly anticipated decision in the matter of In re Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, 2010 WL 1006647, (3rd Cir. Case No.
In In re Millennium Lab Holdings II, LLC, 2017 BL 354864 (Bankr. D. Del. Oct. 3, 2017), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware ruled that it had the constitutional authority to grant nonconsensual third-party releases in an order confirming the chapter 11 plan of laboratory testing company Millennium Lab Holdings II, LLC ("Millennium"). In so ruling, the court rejected an argument made by a group of creditors that a provision in Millennium’s plan releasing racketeering claims against the debtor’s former shareholders was prohibited by the U.S.
The next few years are expected to see a significant increase in the volume of bankruptcy cases filed by health care providers. Thus far in 2017, the number of bankruptcies in health care-related sectors, including hospitals, physicians’ offices and clinics, specialty outpatient facilities, assisted-living facilities, and other providers, has been surpassed only by bankruptcies in the oil and gas, finance, and retail industries.
A contractual waiver of an entity’s right to file for bankruptcy is generally invalid as a matter of public policy. Nonetheless, lenders sometimes attempt to prevent a borrower from seeking bankruptcy protection by conditioning financing on a covenant, bylaw, or corporate charter provision that restricts the power of the borrower’s governing body to authorize such a filing. One such restriction—a lender-designated “special member” with the power to block a bankruptcy filing—was recently invalidated by the court in In re Lake Mich.