It has long been the case that secured creditors could be charged for the reasonable and necessary costs incurred to preserve the value of their collateral.  This equitable principle emerges out of case law that predates not only the current Bankruptcy Code, but also its immediate predecessor, the Bankruptcy Act of 1938.  As now codified in section 50

In the United States Supreme Court’s plurality opinion in Hamdi v.

As the adage goes, everything old is new again.  Just like old fads coming back into style, bankruptcy issues that first arose decades ago seem to present themselves again and again over the years, albeit with a different set of facts.  Such is the case with the bankruptcy of Johns-Manville Corporation and its affiliates.  Despite Manville’s emergence from bankruptcy in 1988, questions regarding the protections of the channeling injunction issued under Manville’s chapter 11 plan continue to present themselves today.  Much to the relief of one of Manville’s insurers, in a

Although almost all of an individual debtor’s assets become property of the estate upon a bankruptcy filing, certain exceptions exist to the rule at both the federal and state level.  In some jurisdictions, funds held for a debtor in retirement plans are exempt assets.  An open question, however, is whether payments distributed from such plans prior to the petition date are also exempt assets.  The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently held in 

Executive Summary

While there has been much fuss over the recent ruling by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in In re Nine West LBO Securities Litigation¹ due to its potential ramifications for director liability, as we explored in Part I of our series on this case here, court watchers have paid less attention to the court’s treatment of officer liability and the interes

On January 13, 2020, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware issued an opinion in In re La Paloma Generating Company, LLC., Case No. 16-12700 [Adv. Pro.

In a recent opinion – In re Heritage Home Group LLC, et al., Case No. 18-11736 (KG), 2018 WL 4684802 (Bankr. D. Del. Sept. 27, 2018) – the Delaware Bankruptcy Court addressed the longstanding issue of which professional persons must be retained under section 327(a) of the Bankruptcy Code.

Recently in Novinda,1 the Tenth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel2 upheld the separate classification of creditor claims in a chapter 11 plan on the basis that, among other things, such c

Background: Professionals’ Fees in Chapter 11 cases