On June 23, 2011, the US Supreme Court issued a narrowly-divided decision in Stern v. Marshall, limiting Bankruptcy Court jurisdiction over certain types of claims. The Court found that while the Bankruptcy Court was statutorily authorized to enter final judgment on a tortious interference counterclaim (as a core proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 157(b)(2)(C)), it was not constitutionally authorized to do so.

The United States Supreme Court recently ruled in Stern v. Marshall1 that a bankruptcy court lacks constitutional authority to render a final judgment on a bankruptcy estate’s counterclaim against a creditor based on state common law, despite an express statutory grant of jurisdiction. This ruling is the most significant decision regarding bankruptcy court jurisdiction since the Court’s 1982 decision in Northern Pipeline v. Marathon2 and it could significantly affect the administration of bankruptcy cases.

Root of the Constitutional Problem

During her lifetime, Vickie Lynn Marshall, publicly known as Anna Nicole Smith (“Vickie”), was hardly a stranger to the prying eyes of the media. Today, the late Vickie is again the subject of media coverage, this time in the context of a fifteen-year legal saga that has twice reached the United States Supreme Court.

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.

The Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Third Division, applying Indiana and federal law, has held that neither a bankruptcy nor an insured versus insured exclusion applied to bar coverage for claims brought by a bankruptcy trustee.  According to the court, the bankruptcy exclusion is unenforceable because coverage arises from a policy that is a property interest of the debtors, and that property interest is protected under Section 541 of the Bankruptcy Code.  The insured versus insured exclusion did not apply, the court held, because the policyholder and a court-appointe

In Stern v. Marshall, 131 S. Ct. 2594 (2011), the estate of Vickie Lynn Marshall, a.k.a. Anna Nicole Smith, lost by a 5-4 margin Round 2 of its Supreme Court bout with the estate of E. Pierce Marshall in a contest over Vickie's rights to a portion of the fortune of her late husband, billionaire J. Howard Marshall II. The dollar figures in dispute, amounting to more than $400 million, and the celebrity status of the original (and now deceased) litigants may grab headlines.

In Svenhard’s Swedish Bakery v. United States Bakery, Bk. No. 19-15277, 2023 WL 5541420 (9th Cir. Aug. 29, 2023), the Ninth Circuit held that a settlement agreement that resolved an employer’s withdrawal liability to a multiemployer pension fund was not an executory contract that could be assumed and assigned to a third-party when that employer subsequently filed for bankruptcy. The decision is instructive for multiemployer funds and employers that negotiate settlement agreements to resolve these types of liabilities.

Background

Federal appellate courts have traditionally applied a "person aggrieved" standard to determine whether a party has standing to appeal a bankruptcy court order or judgment. However, this standard, which requires a direct, adverse, and financial impact on a potential appellant, is derived from a precursor to the Bankruptcy Code and does not appear in the existing statute.

In earlier posts, the Red Zone has discussed the Supreme Court’s ruling in Siegel v. Fitzgerald, 142 S. Ct. 1770 (2022), which held that increased U.S. Trustee quarterly fees for large Chapter 11 debtors between 2018 and 2020 under the Bankruptcy Judgeship Act of 2017 (the “2017 Act”) were unconstitutional because of disparate treatment of Chapter 11 debtors in Bankruptcy Administrator (“BA”) districts, and subsequent judicial decisions determining the appropriate remedy for debtors who overpaid those fees.

On July 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit partially affirmed and partially reversed a district court’s dismissal of an FDCPA suit. The district court reviewed plaintiff’s claims under the FDCPA, which alleged that defendants violated the bankruptcy court’s order discharging his debt and knowingly filed a baseless debt collection lawsuit.