In the case of United States of America v. Edward P. Bond, No. 12-4803 (2d. Cir. August 13, 2014), the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (the "Second Circuit") issued a decision that could have far-reaching effects on how liquidating chapter 11 bankruptcy cases will be handled in the future.

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.

Alerts and Updates

The opinion is significant for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the Bankruptcy Court held that a make-whole premium is not a claim for unmatured interest as the Court of Appeals had intimated.

The Revel decision provides a cautionary tale for purchasers under Section 363.

Selvam LLC, the Singapore Law Practice of Duane Morris & Selvam LLP, recently succeeded in securing the dismissal of a suit brought by a liquidator in the High Court of Singapore against a defendant director in Prima Bulkship Pte Ltd (In Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation) and Another v Lim Say Wan And Another [2016] SGHC 283.

Under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a secured party can perfect its lien on certain of a debtor's assets by the filing of a UCC-1 financing statement. However, Section 9-509 of the UCC provides that a party may file such a financing statement only if the debtor authorizes the filing: either expressly in an authenticated record or, more commonly, by executing a security agreement. The UCC does not specify when a debtor must provide such authorization, but the U.S.

The New Jersey Supreme Court, in In re: Princeton Office Park, L.P. v. Plymouth Park Tax Services, LLC, determined that under the Tax Sale Law, N.J.S.A. §§ 54:5-1 to -137, a purchaser of a tax sale certificate acquires a tax lien, not a lien securing the property owner's obligation to pay the amount owing to redeem the certificate.

On February 23, 2009, Pennsylvania became the second state to recognize an "ordinary course of business" exception to preference actions brought under a state insolvency statute where the defense is not expressly provided for in the statute. In Joel S. Ario, Insurance Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in His Official Capacity as Liquidator of Reliance Insurance Company, Appellant v. H.J. Heinz Company, H.J. Heinz Company, L.P., H.J. Heinz Finance Company, and Portion Pac, Inc., et al., Appellees, No. 21 MAP 2006 (Pa. Feb.

In In re Smith, (B.A.P. 10th Cir., Aug. 18, 2020), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently joined the majority of circuit courts of appeals in finding that a creditor seeking a judgment of nondischargeability must demonstrate that the injury caused by the prepetition debtor was both willful and malicious under Section 523(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code.

Factual Background

In re Altadena Lincoln Crossing LLC, 2018 Westlaw 3244502 (Bankr. C.D. Cal.), a California bankruptcy court held that a default interest rate provision was an unenforceable penalty under applicable California law because, among other things, the applicable loan agreements did not contain an estimate of the probable costs to the lender resulting from the debtor’s default.

Background