Why Lawyers Need to Pay More Attention to the Distinctions Between Veil-Piercing and Alter-Ego Theories
Last December, the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11 released a 400-page report on recommended changes to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. ABI formed the Commission in 2012 to evaluate business reorganization laws in light of the challenging economic climate and the perception that the costs and complexities associated with filing Chapter 11 have made Chapter 11 filings substantially less viable for businesses experiencing financial difficulty.
The fallout from Industrial Carriers Inc.'s ("ICI") unsuccessful application for the granting of a petition for bankruptcy in Greece in 2008 continued to play out in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia recently. In Flame S.A. v. Indus. Carriers, Inc., 39 F.Supp.3d 769 (E.D. Va.
Walro v. The Lee Group Holding Co., LLC (In re Lee), 524 B.R. 798 (Bankr. S.D. Ind. 2014) –
A chapter 7 trustee sought a court determination that (1) a debtor’s voting rights in a limited liability company (LLC) were property of the bankruptcy estate, and (2) other members of the LLC violated the automatic stay by taking action to remove the debtor as a member and terminating his voting rights.
Prior to the enactment of the Bankruptcy Code in 1978, the Fifth Circuit took a stringent approach to the payment of attorney’s fees – holding that public policy supported restricting attorney compensation in bankruptcy cases and that attorneys should not expect to receive the same compensation as if working for a non-bankrupt concern. Congress enacted
The following commentary provides empirical evidence of how pronounced an impact the consolidation of asbestos cases has had upon the verdicts in the New York City Asbestos Litigation (‘‘NYCAL’’).1 The proliferation of case consolidations as the judicial response to burgeoning caseloads in NYCAL, with an emphasis on expediency and case management, has led to inequitable outcomes, which in turn have raised concerns over violations of defendant due process.
I recently wrote about a decision from a federal district court in Alabama that sidestepped the Eleventh Circuit’s Crawford[1]decision by finding that the Bankruptcy Code (the “Code”) and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) were in irreconcilable conflict, and the FDCPA gave way to the Code on the question of whether the mere act of filing a proof of claim on a stale debt in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy violated the FDCPA.[2]
Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark of the District Court for the District of Delaware reversed and remanded the decision of the Bankruptcy Court which approved a Bankruptcy Rule 9019 settlement that Judge Stark concluded had been inadequately noticed under the circumstances.
On April 20, 2015, the United States Supreme Court denied Defendants’ petition for certiorari in Crawford v. LVNV Funding, declining to take up the issue of whether liability under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq., may be premised on the filing of a proof of claim in bankruptcy.