U.S. courts have a long-standing tradition of recognizing or enforcing the laws and court rulings of other nations as an exercise of international "comity." It has been generally understood that recognition of a foreign bankruptcy proceeding under chapter 15 is a prerequisite to a U.S. court enforcing, under the doctrine of comity, an order or judgment entered in a foreign bankruptcy proceeding or a provision in foreign bankruptcy law applicable to a debtor in such a proceeding.

It is generally recognized that a bankruptcy court has the power—either equitable or statutory—to recharacterize a purported debt as equity if the substance of the transaction belies the labels the parties have given it. A ruling handed down by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York provides a textbook example of such a recharacterization. In In re Live Primary, LLC, 2021 WL 772248 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Mar.

In In re Nine West Holdings, Inc., the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York overruled the U.S.

The Bankruptcy Code’s cramdown provisions are a powerful tool for debtors in the plan confirmation process. Pursuant to section 1129(a)(10) of the Bankruptcy Code, a plan may be confirmed if, among other things, “at least one class of claims that is impaired under the plan has accepted the plan.” Once there is an impaired accepting class, and assuming certain requirements are met, the plan may then be “crammed down” on all other classes of impaired creditors that reject the plan and those creditors will be bound by the terms of a plan they rejected.

Background: Professionals’ Fees in Chapter 11 cases

LBOs can get messy. Such was the case for the Tribune Company, which, in conjunction with its private equity investor, borrowed approximately $10.7 billion in 2007 to finance its buyout. Soon after the LBO was completed, Tribune experienced financial difficulties that made it unable to service its new debt, and, in December 2008, the company filed for chapter 11 protection.

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there is a famous exchange between Humpty Dumpty and Alice regarding the meaning of words. Toward the end of that dialogue, Alice asked Humpty Dumpty what he meant by the word “impenetrability.” Humpty Dumpty’s response was to not only give the word a meaning that would not be found in any dictionary, but to also expand the meaning he gave the word so that it required affirmative action on Alice’s part.

On April 25, 2016, Judge Glenn of the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York issued a memorandum in an adversary proceeding in which neither of the two non-debtor parties apparently wanted to be in the Southern District of New York.

The latest in a line of fraudulent transfer decisions in the Madoff case has added to the case-law regarding what level of knowledge is needed to plead actual fraud in securities Ponzi scheme cases.

As we previously reported here at the Weil Bankruptcy Blog, in Burberry Limited and Burberry USA v.