PG&E Corporation and its utility subsidiary Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) recently filed the largest utility bankruptcy in U.S. history, and the sixth-largest corporate bankruptcy ever.
Intercreditor agreements between secured creditors are intended to limit the potential for litigation and result in predictable commercial outcomes with respect to recoveries from collateral in enforcement actions and bankruptcies. Despite the extensive drafting efforts of sophisticated counsel to eliminate ambiguities in these agreements, the interpretation of intercreditor agreements has been the subject of substantial bankruptcy litigation.
When a court reaches a decision in a case, the law of the case doctrine generally provides that parties should not be able to relitigate the same issue in that case, and for the court to adhere to its prior decision.1 The doctrine does not, however, apply to every decision a court reaches. Two recent decisions by Judge Elizabeth Stong in the Brizinova chapter 7 cases in the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York explore when the doctrine may or may not apply in bankruptcy cases.
On Wednesday, February 20, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Mission Product Holdings vs. Tempnology, LLC. to decide what it means to “reject” a trademark license agreement in bankruptcy.
Can another vain attempt to mitigate a $1.5 billion mistake provide the occasion for a thorough review of the doctrine of earmarking? It did for Southern District Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in the long tail on the General Motors bankruptcy case.
When a creditor is looming, the debtor may be tempted to give away assets to friendly parties so that the creditor will not have recourse to seize as many assets. This was the impetus behind our laws today that hold such actions as voidable transactions (also known as fraudulent transfers) when the intent behind such actions is motivated by the goal of depriving the creditor of reachable assets, or when such actions render the debtor insolvent or the debtor was already insolvent.
There is nothing quite like obtaining a new customer or getting a new big sale - the prospect of recurring revenue from a new source, the validation of business strategy, or the culmination of a successful negotiation.
However, there is nothing more disheartening than when a new customer is unable or unwilling to pay forthe product you just shipped or services you just provided. Perhaps there is one thing that is worse, when a long-term customer fails to pay.
In the In re FirstEnergy Solutions Corporation bankruptcy cases,[1] the court recently issued an opinion narrowing the number of situations in which a fixed
I have been reading Storm Lake, a book by Art Cullen, the editor of the Storm Lake (Iowa) Times and a 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing. In his book, Cullen chronicles the ways that agriculture and his hometown of Storm Lake have been transformed over the years. What strikes me most about the book is how the business cycles of boom and bust still exist in agriculture today and are little changed from when I was growing up on a farm in Iowa decades ago. It appears that we are in or entering a new bust cycle in production agriculture.
The Supreme Court held oral argument earlier today in the Mission Products v. Tempnology case, on the issue of the effect of rejection by a licensor of a trademark license on the licensee’s rights.