On June 26, 2015, the District Court for the Middle District of Florida issued an opinion on consolidated appeals arising from the Bayou Shores SNF, LLC bankruptcy case with potentially broad implications for healthcare bankruptcy cases. At the heart of the dispute before the District Court was whether the Bankruptcy Court had jurisdiction to enjoin the termination of, and subsequently authorize the assumption of, certain Medicare and Medicaid provider agreements in the bankruptcy case. As discussed below, the District Court held the Medicare jurisdictional bar set fort
In pari delicto is an equitable defense asserted when a defendant claims that a plaintiff is equally at fault for the wrong that has befallen him. The doctrine is “rooted in the common-law notion that a plaintiff’s recovery may be barred by his own wrongful conduct.” Pinter v. Dahl, 486 U.S. 622, 632 (1988) (citing Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards, Inc. v. Berner, 472 U.S. 299, 306 (1985)).
It has been a few years since we at the Blog have discussed the Barton doctrine, the common law bankruptcy rule requiring a party to seek leave from the appointing court before suing a court-appointed receiver (see here and
Is market value sufficient proof of reasonably equivalent value for purposes of the good-faith-for-value defense under Texas law? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit certified that question to the Texas Supreme Court on June 30, 2015, after vacating its earlier decision in Janvey v. The Golf Channel, Inc., 2015 WL 3972216, at *3 (5th Cir. June 30, 2015).
“Many debtors…fail to complete a Chapter 13 [bankruptcy] plan successfully,” noted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a recent Supreme Court decision, Harris v. Viegelahn, 135 S.Ct. 1829 (2015). It is for this reason that the Bankruptcy Code provides the nonwaiveable right of a debtor to convert a voluntary Chapter 13 case to a Chapter 7 case at any time. 11 U.S.C. § 1307(a). However, this conversion is not without its challenges. One such challenge is determining how postpetition wages that were collected during the Chapter 13 plan should be distributed after the conversion.
In a post-housing crisis economy, many homeowners, facing a plummet in home values, found themselves trapped in homes that are worth less than the amount they owe bank. Those homeowners have sought refuge in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, attempting to strip down the first mortgage and leaving many junior lienholders holding nothing but the bag—until now. In a big win for lenders, the U.S.
Twin rulings by the District Court for the Southern District of New York, the first of which was issued in December 2014 and the second issued on June 23rd of this year, have created great uncertainty in the bond market regarding whether, when and to what extent Section 316(b) of the Trust Indenture Act (the “TIA”) may now be used by minority bondholders to block out-of-court restructurings, notwithstanding that a particular restructuring is consistent with the provisions of the relevant indenture.
Two important and very different decisions regarding public pensions were recently issued by the Supreme Court of Illinois and the Supreme Court of New Jersey. These decisions are significant not only for the workers and taxpayers in these States, but also for the owners and insurers of municipal bonds issued in these States.
ILLINOIS
On April 8, 2015, we distributed a Corporate Alert outlining two important decisions of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and their potential effects on future debt exchange offers.1 Since then, the Education Management court has issued a final ruling on the following question, as stated by the court in its most recent decision: “does a debt restructuring violate Section 316(b) of the Trust Indenture Act (the Act) when it does not modify any indenture term explicitly governing the right to receive interest or principal on