By the authority of the Heavenly Court, and by the authority of the earthly court, we hold it permissible to pray with those who have transgressed… — Kol Nidrei (Preamble)

Two recent decisions from the District Court for the Southern District of New York have renewed interest in the Trust Indenture Act and the ability of minority bondholders to use it as a shield to protect its rights in an out-of-court nonconsensual restructuring:  Marblegate Asset Management, LLC v.

Attorney.  Counselor.  Advisor.  As “the last bastion of the generalist,” the role of the restructuring attorney takes various forms and requires a restructuring attorney to wear many different hats – at times acting both as lawyer and business advisor.  This combination of business and law is very often what draws professionals to the practice area in the first place.  The line, however, between business and legal advisor is often blurry and imprecise, and a recent 

We’ve written extensively here, here, and

In a recent decision, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York upheld a bankruptcy court order that enjoined a plaintiff holding an asbestos claim from pursuing a state court products liability claim against the successor to Manville Forest Products Corporate (“MFP”). Notably, the Court reaffirmed that a claim relating to prepetition exposure to asbestos is a prepetition claim, even though the injury may not have manifested itself until after the petition date.

Background

On 6 March 2020, the restructuring of Doncasters Group's 1.22 billion funded debt was completed. Following a successful non-core disposals program, the Doncasters Group (a leading worldwide supplier of high quality engineered components for the aerospace, industrial gas turbine and specialist automotive industries) operates from 12 principal manufacturing facilities based across the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Mexico and China.

Whether a contract is executory is an often-litigated issue in bankruptcy because of the treatment afforded to such contracts. Although the Bankruptcy Code does not define the term “executory contract,” most courts follow a variation of the definition provided by Professor Vern Countryman in a 1973 law review article.

In the novel A Frolic of His Own, by William Gaddis1, the protagonist, Oscar Crease, is run over by his own driverless car when it slips from park into neutral while Oscar is standing in front of the car trying to hot-wire it.

The Supreme Court in London today gave judgment in the Waterfall I appeal, a dispute as to the distribution of the estimated £8 billion surplus of assets in the main Lehman operating company in Europe, Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE).

LBIE entered administration on 15 September 2008 and has now paid its unsecured creditors dividends of 100p in the £. The Waterfall I Supreme Court appeal addressed some of the key issues as to who should receive the surplus, which we discuss below.

“So-called” Currency Conversion Claims

In this installment of “To Cap or Not to Cap,” which was previously featured on Weil’s Bankruptcy Blog in May of 2015 (see here), we reviewed a recent decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In Kupfer v.