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.
In an interesting twist on a run-of-themill case regarding the personal liability of a corporate officer for unremitted sales taxes, the New York State Division of Tax Appeals held an owner (“Petitioner”) personally liable for sales tax even though the corporation was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was being run by a bankruptcy court-approved management company. In re Eugene Dinino, Docket Nos. 822605, 822606, 822607, 822608, 822609, 822610 (N.Y.S. Div. of Tax App. June 24, 2010).
Masuda, Funai, Eifert & Mitchell routinely represents creditors in bankruptcy proceedings in order to protect their contractual and legal interests and rights to payment. The following is a list of some recent larger U.S. bankruptcy filings in various industries. To the extent you are a creditor to any of these debtors, or other entities which may have filed for bankruptcy protection, you as a creditor are entitled to certain protections under the Bankruptcy Code.
AIRLINES
Now that the American Land Title Association ("ALTA") has withdrawn the ALTA Form 21-06 Creditor's Rights Endorsement, what steps can a lender take to protect itself?
To recap, the Creditors' Rights Endorsement provided protection against loss or damage sustained by the lender in the event that the lender's mortgage was set aside due to a fraudulent conveyance or preference under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, state insolvency statutes or other creditor's rights laws.
On Friday, the Office of Thrift Supervision closed Mainstreet Savings Bank, FSB, headquartered in Hastings Michigan, and appointed the FDIC [http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/mainstsvgs.html] as receiver for the bank.
On Friday, the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services closed Home Valley Bank, headquartered in Cave Junction, Oregon, and appointed the FDIC as receiver for the bank.
Earlier this month, Bettina M Whyte, the SemGroup Litigation Trustee (the "Trustee") filed approximately 350 adversary actions against various creditors in the SemCrude bankruptcy. The majority of the adversary actions are preference actions under 11 U.S.C. section 547 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. Some of the adversary actions, however, allege defendants received fraudulent transfers from various SemCrude debtors (the "Debtors").
Yesterday, Treasury released its most recent transactions report for the period ending July 20, 2010. The report shows the completed exchange of Treasury's $400 million of preferred stock in First BanCorp for $424,174,000 of mandatorily convertible preferred stock (MCP), which is equivalent to the initial investment amount of $400 million plus $24,174,000 of capitalized previously accrued and unpaid dividends.