(7th Cir. June 13, 2016)

(7th Cir. June 10, 2016)

The Seventh Circuit reverses, holding the bankruptcy court applied too narrow of a baseline payment range to the creditor’s ordinary course defense in this preference action. While this court agreed that there were a few payments outside the ordinary course, the new value defense applied to completely offset those payments. Opinion below.

Judge: Sykes

Attorneys for Appellant: Nixon Peabody LLP, Richard Scott Alsterda, Theodore Eric Harman

Attorneys for Appellee: Clark Hill PLC, Pamela Joy Leichtling, Scott N. Schreiber

Even before Congress added section 365(c)(3) to the Bankruptcy Code in 1984, it was generally understood that a nonresidential real property lease which has been validly terminated under applicable law prior to a bankruptcy filing by the debtor-former tenant cannot be assumed or assigned in bankruptcy. Moreover, the terminated leasehold interest is excluded from the debtor’s bankruptcy estate, and any action by the landlord to obtain possession of the formerly leased premises is not prohibited by the automatic stay.

The courts have long struggled with the question of whether particular orders entered by a bankruptcy court are final, and therefore appealable as a matter of right. It is generally recognized that a bankruptcy case is distinctly different from the usual civil case in that it is a framework within which a variety of disputes arise and are resolved. That distinction is recognized in 28 U.S.C. §158(d)(1), which provides that appeals as of right maybe taken not only from final judgments in cases but from “final judgments, orders, and decrees…in cases and proceedings….”

On March 11, 2016, the Seventh Circuit ruled that a distressed company’s termination of a lease pursuant to an agreement with its landlord and the relinquishment of its leasehold interest to its landlord constituted “transfers” that may be avoidable as fraudulent transfers and preferences under the Bankruptcy Code.  The decision, Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creditors v. T.D. Invs. I, LLP (In re Great Lakes Quick Lube LP, 816 F.3d 482 (7th Cir. 2016)), serves as a cautionary tale for landlords dealing with distressed tenants.

Background

Many landlords are very familiar with provisions of the United States Bankruptcy Code dealing with assumption and rejection of leases. However, the particular consequences of lease rejection may not be as well known. For example, once a lease is rejected or deemed to be rejected, a landlord may not know its rights with respect to regaining possession of the leased premises. A recent case from a Florida bankruptcy court shed some light on this issue when it held that after a debtor has rejected a lease, the tenant must surrender the premises to the landlord.

In pari delicto is a common law defense against liability in circumstances where the culpability of the plaintiff is at least as great as the culpability of the defendant. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania clarified Pennsylvania law on this on February 16, 2010, in Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creditors of Allegheny Health, Educ. & Research Found. v.

The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) estimates that by the end of 2010, more than 300 banks will have failed, and that the cost of resolving these failures may reach $100 billion over the next four years.1

• On August 4, 2010, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a Wisconsin federal district court’s ruling on the Wisconsin bankruptcy court’s disposition of three of Telephone and Data Systems’ (TDS) claims, and the FCC’s objections thereto, filed in Airadigm’s Chapter 11 reorganization plan. The principal assets at issue were a series of C- and F-block spectrum licenses for mobile phone service in certain areas of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan that Airadigm had won at auction in the late 1990s.

Longview Aluminum, LLC v Brandt (In re Longview Aluminum, LLC), 2010 WL 2635787 (ND Ill, June 28, 2010)

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