The United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware recently dismissed equitable subordination and fraudulent transfer claims filed by the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Champion Enterprises, Inc. ("Champion") against more than 100 prepetition lenders to Champion (collectively, the "Defendants")1.
A “roll-up” is a form of postpetition financing which has the effect of elevating the priority of prepetition debt. In a roll-up, the prepetition debt of the postpetition, new money lenders is rolled into the debtor in possession financing, thus affording the prepetition debt superpriority status and, in many circumstances, ensuring the rolled-up debt is paid in full on the effective date of the plan of reorganization, (unless the lender consents to different treatment under the plan).1
On Thursday, August 6, 2009, the United States Senate confirmed Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United States. As a former Judge on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor’s jurisprudence includes a number of decisions involving noteworthy bankruptcy cases. This article provides a brief survey of these decisions.
As the Madoff Securities and Stanford Financial schemes have unraveled in recent months, financial industry participants have had to scrutinize closely their involvement with these entities. A key issue in each of these cases will be the extent to which the trustee (or similar representative) can “claw back” payments made as part of the Ponzi and related fraudulent schemes. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York recently considered similar facts in Bayou Accredited Fund, LLC v. Redwood Growth Partners, L.P.
In Aalfs v. Wirum (In re Straightline Investments, Inc.),1 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered whether a post-petition factoring of accounts receivable by the debtor was an avoidable transfer under section 549 of the Bankruptcy Code. The Court of Appeals affirmed the Bankruptcy Court, finding that the post-petition transfer had been properly avoided and that the lower court was justified in allowing the trustee both to recover the accounts receivable and their proceeds and to retain the consideration paid by the transferee.
Introduction
A recent federal district court appellate decision issued in the Enron chapter 11 case1 has ruled that the postpetition transfer of a prepetition bankruptcy claim from one party to another may insulate the transferred claim against certain types of attack based solely on conduct by a prior holder of the same claim. Whether a particular claim is protected depends upon how the claim was transferred.
On August 26, 2014, Judge Robert D.
On December 4, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit added to the growing body of case law delineating the extent of bankruptcy courts’ jurisdiction in the wake the Supreme Court’s decision in Stern v. Marshall.
On August 2, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a requirements contract for electricity is a forward contract for purposes of section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code and, therefore, settlement payments made under the contract are exempt from avoidance as preferences. Claude Lightfoot v.