In an unusual decision, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas found that emailing hyperlinks directing others to view a third-party’s blog is a sufficient “publication” to sustain a defamation claim under state law.

On April 5, 2010, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida denied motions filed by Black Crow's secured creditor that would have likely ended the company's chance to reorganize its operations under chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.

The intersection between major league sports franchises and Chapter 11 was something, a few years ago, that many thought was unlikely at best and virtually impossible at worst. With the value of marquee major league sports franchises on the rise, coupled with rising real estate values, rising television and radio revenues, rising corporate box and license revenues, few thought that trouble was in their future.

The Texas Rangers filed for bankruptcy relief in late May, 2010, to break an impasse between the club and its bank lenders, who are owed approximately $550 million and who oppose a planned sale to a group led by Nolan Ryan. The Rangers are owned by Hicks Sports Group, which acquired the club in 1998 and had guaranteed the debt.

With the August 4, 2010 auction of the division leading Texas Rangers looming and the memory of last year's bankruptcy sale of the Phoenix Coyotes fresh in our minds, there has been a lot of discussion among bankruptcy professionals about the unique issues that arise when a sports club files for bankruptcy. Generally, sports clubs file bankruptcy for the same reasons as other businesses — as a last resort to save going concern value and/or to avail themselves of some strategic advantage under the Bankruptcy Code.

As widely reported, the bankruptcy auction for the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball franchise ended with a winning $593 million bid from an ownership group led by Nolan Ryan.

The Texas Rangers were sold in an August bankruptcy auction to a syndicate headed by former baseball great Nolan Ryan and attorney Chuck Greenberg. The final purchase price was $608 million—nearly $100 million more than the original offer for the team—and is a great example of how lenders can use the bankruptcy process to maximize the value of an asset.

With the future of the New York City Off Track Betting Corp. up in the air, the New York Senate returned to the Capitol Tuesday, Dec. 7, to find itself in the middle of a long-standing battle between tracks and OTB corporations in the state.

Officials at the NYCOTB, which is in Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, vowed to shut down the stateowned betting giant at midnight Dec. 7 if the Senate does not pass a reorganization bill already approved last week by the Assembly.

In the last eighteen months, two Major League Baseball teams, the Chicago Cubs and the Texas Rangers, were sold in bankruptcy. Although both teams engaged in very similar processes leading up to their respective bankruptcy filings, the bankruptcy cases took very divergent paths.

Recently, a Colorado bankruptcy court considered for the first time the effects of Bankruptcy Code Section 552 on a lender’s security interest in the proceeds of an FCC broadcast license. The court held that a prepetition security interest would not extend to proceeds received from a post-petition transfer of the debtor’s FCC license because the debtor did not have an attachable, prepetition property interest in the proceeds. Such an interest does not arise until the FCC approves an agreement to sell the license.