Following California-based solar manufacturer Solyndra’s announcement August 31 that it intends to file for bankruptcy, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-TX) requested more documents from the White House regarding the Department of Energy’s $535 million loan guarantee to the company, the first to be awarded in September 2009. The bankruptcy is likely to intensify congressional criticism of the agency’s loan guarantee program and other renewable energy subsidies.

As discussed in previousposts, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (the “Act”) was signed into law on December 27, 2020, largely to address the harsh economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Trump signed the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (the “SBRA”) into law in August of last year and it became effective on February 20, 2020. The SBRA amended the U.S. Bankruptcy Code and is designed to simplify and shorten the reorganization process for “small businesses” and to make the entire process more cost effective. At the same time that the SBRA was coming online, the U.S. economy experienced a severe downturn as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Judge Swain’s decision in the PROMESA Title III bankruptcy proceeding of the Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority (“PRHTA”) that a federal bankruptcy court cannot compel a municipal debtor to apply special revenues to post-petition debt service payments on special revenue bonds has generated controversy and caused some market participants to question whether, if the decision is upheld by the First Circuit on appeal, the perception that special revenue bonds have special rights in bankruptcy remains justified.

Imagine you are the CEO of company sitting across from an interviewer. The interviewer asks you the age old question, “So tell me about your company’s strengths and weaknesses?” You start thinking about your competitive advantages that distinguish you from competitors. You decide to talk about how you know your customers better than the competition, including who they are, what they need, and how your products and services fit their needs and desires. The interviewer, being somewhat cynical, asks “Aren’t you worried about the liabilities involved with collecting all that data?”

At first glance, Stanziale v. MILK072011, looks like someone suing over a bad expiration date and conjures up images of Ron Burgundy proclaiming “milk was a bad choice.” But in actuality Stanziale is much more interesting: it answers whether one can breach their fiduciary duty by exposing an employer to a claim under the aptly-named WARN Act, which requires employers to tip off their workers to a possible job loss.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals in In re SW Boston Hotel Venture, LLC, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 6768 (1st Cir. Apr. 11, 2014) recently ruled on a number of issues critical to valuing a secured claim in bankruptcy. Specifically, the court 1) endorsed the use of a “flexible approach” to value collateral under the circumstances of this case, 2) recognized that the date collateral should be valued is the lender’s burden to prove, and 3) confirmed that the pre-petition agreement’s default interest rate should generally be used to determine the post-petition interest rate.

A recent ruling in the American Airlines bankruptcy case enforcing an automatic acceleration upon bankruptcy provision serves as a reminder that the enforceability of so-called ipso facto provisions in debt instruments remains an unsettled, forum-dependent question.      

In a significant expansion of the potential risk for distressed claims traders, the Delaware bankruptcy court has recently ruled¹ that traders who engage in insider trading may have their claims subordinated to equity, and that traders who amass claims sufficient to block a plan of reorganization owe fiduciary duties to all other creditors and shareholders during plan negotiations.

Since it was issued three years ago by the Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel, the Clear Channel decision (Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc. v. Knupfer (In re PW, LLC), 391 B.R. 25 (9th Cir. B.A.P. 2008)) has been widely criticized as “an aberration in well-settled bankruptcy jurisprudence.” Before Clear Channel, conventional wisdom (and what most people perceived to be the law) supported the notion that a bankruptcy sale order that contained a good faith finding under Section 363(m) could not be disturbed on appeal.