Creditors seeking to execute on debtors’ assets to collect on judgments face legal limits under Illinois law, which lets a debtor claim certain types of property as exempt from enforcement of a judgment, wage deduction order or other collection measure. A creditor’s attorney must conduct a thorough examination of a judgment debtor’s assets to determine which assets are available in whole or in part as sources of payment of the amount due.

Late last week, the District Court for the Southern District of New York provided a reminder of the importance of precise drafting. In Transform Holdco LLC v. Sears Holdings Corp. et. al., CV-05782, Doc. 20, the contractual question at issue related to the purchase of substantially all of the assets (and assumption of certain of the liabilities) of Sears and its domestic and foreign subsidiaries by Transform Holdco LLC (“Transform”) in Sears’ bankruptcy case.

On May 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed a district court’s decision, ruling that American tribes are not exempt from federal law barring suits against debtors once they file for bankruptcy.

On May 10, 2022, Talen Energy Supply, LLC, a Texas-based independent power producer founded in 2015, filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (Case No. 22-90054).

Nature abhors a vacuum. Equipment finance abhors bankruptcy. Whether in securitized or large, single-asset financings, financiers structure transactions to be “bankruptcy remote.” This article will discuss a December 2021 bankruptcy court bench ruling that found certain protective provisions to be unenforceable and describe how those provisions might have been devised to survive the court’s scrutiny.

On May 8, 2022, Armstrong Flooring, Inc., a Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based designer and manufacturer of innovative flooring solutions, filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (Case No. 22-10426).

In In re Squirrels Rsch. Labs, LLC, No. 21-61491, 2022 WL 1310173, at *1 (Bankr. N.D. Ohio Apr. 29, 2022), the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio recently addressed whether post-sale of the debtors’ assets, a creditor could conduct discovery to investigate the extent of a secured creditor’s liens in order to amend the distribution of the sale proceeds. Under the facts of this case, the bankruptcy court denied the creditor’s request.

I. Introduction

“The trustee shall . . . appear and be heard at . . . any hearing that concerns . . . the value of property . . . confirmation of a plan . . . sale of property.” § 1183(b)(3) (emphasis added).

In every Subchapter V case, the trustee has a statutory duty to “appear and be heard” on certain issues. Often, a trustee can satisfy such duty, on many issues, by participating in a hearing and expressing a verbal opinion on the matter that’s before the Bankruptcy Court.

At the COP26 climate summit in November 2021, over forty countries committed to phase out use of coal-fired power.