The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently provided landlords dealing with a rejected lease with further guidance on the size and basis of their claims against a tenant’s bankruptcy estate. Kupfer v. Salma (In re Kupfer), No. 14-16697 (9th Cir. Dec. 29, 2016). The Ninth Circuit held that the statutory cap – 11 U.S.C.

The United States Bankruptcy Code, pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Section 502(b)(6), caps a landlord's claim in bankruptcy for damages resulting from the termination of a real property lease. See In re PPI EnterprisesU.S., 324 F.3d 197, 207 (3rd Cir. 2003). Under Section 502(b)(6), a landlord-creditor is entitled to rent reserve from the greater of one lease year or 15 percent, not to exceed three years, of the remaining lease term.

The Ninth Circuit recently ruled that a Chapter 11 debtor could not avoid the payment of default interest under a promissory note as a condition to curing and reinstating such promissory note under a Chapter 11 plan. In Pacifica L 51 LLC v. New Investments Inc. (In re New Investments, Inc.), 840 F.3d 1137 (9th Cir. 2016), the Ninth Circuit held that its prior rule of allowing a curing debtor to avoid a contractual post-default interest rate in a loan agreement—as decided in Great Western Bank & Trust v.

In 1994, Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code to add section 1123(d), which provides that, if a chapter 11 plan proposes to "cure" a default under a contract, the cure amount must be determined in accordance with the underlying agreement and applicable nonbankruptcy law. Since then, a substantial majority of courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, have held that such a cure amount must include any default-rate interest required under either the contract or applicable nonbankruptcy law.

Imagine that while a bankruptcy case is pending, the debtor-in-possession or bankruptcy trustee files a state law claim against one of the estate's creditors. Presumably, if the debtor wins its state law claim, that recovery augments the bankruptcy estate and increases the amount available to pay the debtor's creditors.[1] The creditor, seeking to avoid litigating the action in the debtor's home state court, timely removes the lawsuit to federal court as permitted under 28 U.S.C.

In a win for secured creditors, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that a debtor who sought to cure a pre-petition default of its loan through its Chapter 11 plan must pay the default rate of interest set forth in the note. In Pacifica L 51 LLC v. New Investments Inc., the debtor proposed to pay the outstanding amount due under the note at the pre-default interest rate.

Serving on a court-appointed bankruptcy committee can come with many benefits, and the list just got a little longer. In Blixseth v. Brown, the Ninth Circuit held that committee members enjoy some of the same protections as trustees when it comes to potential attacks for actions taken during a bankruptcy case.

Overturning prior pro-debtor precedent, a federal appeals court recently emphasized that secured lenders are entitled to the benefit of their bargains with defaulting borrowers, by making it easier for lenders to collect default-rate interest from a Chapter 11 debtor under a plan of reorganization. Bankruptcy law has long allowed debtors to pay arrearages under a Chapter 11 plan and thereby reinstate the pre-default terms of their loans.

A Chapter 11 debtor “cannot nullify a preexisting obligation in a loan agreement to pay post-default interest solely by proposing a cure,” held a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Nov. 4, 2016. In re New Investments Inc., 2016 WL 6543520, *3 (9th Cir. Nov. 4, 2016) (2-1).

In the recent decision of Pacifica L51 LLC v. New Invs., Inc. (In re New Invs., Inc.), No. 13-36194, 2016 WL 6543520 (9th Cir. Nov. 4, 2016), the Ninth Circuit held that Section 1123(d) of the Bankruptcy Code legislatively overruled Great W. Bank & Tr. v. Entz-White Lumber & Supply, Inc. (In re Entz-White Lumber & Supply, Inc.), 850 F.2d 1338 (9th Cir.