On December 17, 2010, in In re Settlement Facility Dow Corning Trust (6th Cir., Case Nos. 09-1827/1830, Dec.
On November 10 we posted to Basis Points a blog concerning a Delaware Bankruptcy Court decision (In re Universal Building Products) that fired a warning shot across the bows of professionals who solicit Creditors’ Committee proxies from non-clients of their firms (here is the blog).
What you need to know
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled that where a medical malpractice claim is transferred from an insolvent insurer to the Massachusetts Insurers Insolvency Fund, the Fund is liable for the statutory cap of $299,999 for each of the multiple claims arising from one overall medical incident, subject to the policy’s aggregate limits.
What you need to do
In St. Hill v. Tribeca Lending Corp., Case No. 09-2214, 2010 WL 2997724 (3rd Cir. Dec. 8, 2010), the Third Circuit showed that, in determining whether the Truth In Lending Act (TILA) applied to a credit transaction, it would look beyond obvious facts to ascertain a transaction's "primary purpose."
A recent decision may provide important ammunition to Madoff investors against "clawback" actions brought by the SIPC Trustee overseeing the Madoff bankruptcy estate (the "Madoff Trustee").1 The Madoff Trustee alleges that investors who withdrew monies from their accounts fraudulently transferred estate property under state and federal law, regardless of whether they lost more than they withdrew.
On December 23rd, the Third Circuit addressed whether the automatic stay provisions of the Bankruptcy Code prevents a home mortgage lender from accounting for the pre-petition escrow shortage in its post-petition calculation of future monthly escrow payments. The Court concluded that when the terms of the loan allow the lender to escrow taxes and insurance payments, the lender has a pre-petition claim. In re Francisco Rodriguez.
Introduction
A debtor's decision to assume or reject an executory contract is typically given deferential treatment by bankruptcy courts under a "business judgment" standard. Certain types of nondebtor parties to such contracts, however, have been afforded special protections. For example, in 1988, Congress added section 365(n) to the Bankruptcy Code, granting some intellectual property licensees the right to continued use of licensed property, notwithstanding a debtor's rejection of the underlying license agreement.
The "common interest" doctrine allows attorneys representing different clients with aligned legal interests to share information and documents without waiving the work-product doctrine or attorney-client privilege. Issues involving the common-interest doctrine often arise during the course of a business restructuring, because restructurings tend to involve various constituencies, including the company, the official committee of unsecured creditors, secured debt holders, other creditors, and equity holders whose legal interests may be aligned at any one time.
Earlier this month, in Rea v. Federated Investors, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 25501 (Dec. 15, 2010), the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that while federal law prohibits a private employer from firing or discriminating against an employee who files or has filed for bankruptcy, it does not prohibit a private employer from denying employment to someone simply because he had filed for bankruptcy in the past. Thus, 11 U.S.C. § 525(b) does not create a cause of action against private employers who engage in discriminatory hiring.