Introduction
On June 23, 2011, after fifteen years of hugely acrimonious litigation, the Supreme Court of the United States (the “Court”) issued a decision on a narrow legal issue that may end up significantly limiting the scope of bankruptcy courts’ core jurisdiction.
The United States Supreme Court will hand down its decision in the next few weeks in the case of Wellness Int’l Network, Ltd. v. Sharif (“Wellness”), 727 F.3d 751 (7th Cir. 2013) regarding bankruptcy courts’ jurisdiction. The jurisdictional quagmire is a major and growing virus in the bankruptcy courts, increasing exponentially the costs of bankruptcy litigation. Hopefully the Wellness decision will eventually provide a belated prescription on bankruptcy courts’ jurisdiction, and make us all feel just peachy.
A little background:
Can a waiver of rights ever be beneficial to the person granting the waiver? Yes. In In re Adamson Apparel, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held, in a 2-1
It is already relatively settled that an insider who has personally guaranteed the debt of his or her company may face preference exposure to the extent the guaranteed debt is paid down during the one-year preference period applicable to insiders. Without doubt, such payments directly benefit the guarantor, whose obligation to the primary creditor is reduced dollar for dollar.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in In Re Adamson Apparel, Inc. became the first appellate court to address the validity of “Deprizio waivers.” In Adamson, the court held that because the Deprizio waiver was not a “sham” provision, the insider was not a creditor of the debtor that could be subject to a preference action.
“A corporate insider who personally guaranteed” the debtor’s loan was not liable on a bankruptcy trustee’s preference claim when the corporate debtor repaid its lender, held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on May 6, 2015. In re Adamson Apparel, Inc., 2015 WL 2081575 (9th Cir. May 6, 2015) (2-1).
In a case of first impression, the Ninth Circuit held that the unsecured portion of a secured debt, for which the
In its opinion in Gray v. Warfield (In re Gray), 523 B.R. 170 (9th Cir. BAP 2014), the Ninth Circuit BAP held that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Law v. Siegel, 134 S. Ct. 1188 (2014) precludes a bankruptcy court from denying a debtor’s amendment of his claim of exemption on equitable grounds.
If cramdown failures are par for the course, why are we all so fascinated with them? One thing is certain: they always provide a good teaching moment for practitioners. Marlow Manor’s chapter 11 single asset real estate case is no different.
Under section 550(a) of the Bankruptcy Code, a trustee or debtor in possession may recover property (or its value) that has been fraudulently transferred “from the initial transferee or the entity for whose benefit the avoided transfer was made.” While the trustee’s right to recover from an initial transferee is absolute once a transfer is deemed fraudulent, a subsequent transferee may assert affirmative defenses that could prevent recovery by the estate of an otherwise avoidable transfer. As a result, defendants in fraudulent transfer litigations often take great pains to chara