Generally, as a result of judicial and legislative reforms, plaintiffs’ lawyers have moved away from mass screenings and filing of claims on behalf of unimpaired or non-malignancy plaintiffs in asbestos litigation. Rather, many of these unimpaired cases are being moved through the less rigorously reviewed channels of asbestos bankruptcy trusts that provide relatively little oversight and have more than $36.8 billion in assets available.

After filing for US bankruptcy protection in Texas based on aJapanese bankruptcy, the Judge ordered that Mt.

Unlike real estate transactions where a lender can obtain title insurance, secured lenders are often relying upon the representations and warranties in their loan agreement and the borrower’s audited financial statements, if and when determining whether the collateral securing their loans is owned by the borrower or another pledgor.  After default, a lender may find itself in a precarious position whereby it is unable to foreclose on the collateral because it is not owned by its borrower and it does not have a pledge from the person that actually does own the property.  According

ASBESTOS TRUSTS FIND “PATTERN” OF SUBMITTING UNRELIABLE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT TRUST CLAIMS

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, on March 19, 2014, held that a corrupt debtor’s pre-bankruptcy cash transfer to a commodity broker was a “settlement payment” made “in connection with a securities contract,” thus falling “within [Bankruptcy Code] §546(e)’s safe harbor” and insulating the transfer from the trustee’s preference claim. Grede v. FCStone, LLC (In re Sentinel Management Group, Inc.), 2014 WL 1041736, *7 (7th Cir. Mar. 19, 2014).

Earlier today, April 3, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice announced its largest ever environmental enforcement recovery case involving a $5.15 billion settlement, $4.4 billion of which will go to environmental cleanup and claims.

The Ninth Circuit’s Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) recently upheld the disallowance of a credit union’s claims after the credit union’s “disgruntled employee” failed to file the proofs of claim before the claims bar date. 

The case of Spokane Law Enforcement Federal Credit Union v. Barker (In re Barker) serves as a cautionary tale—reminding creditors and their attorneys of the importance of timely filing proofs of claim.  

The Bankruptcy Code has approximately 275 different sections. The number of its subsections and subparagraphs is well into the thousands. It is impossible to select the “most significant” provision in the Bankruptcy Code, but among the candidates for that title is certainly § 105 of the Code.

Goldman Sachs RMBS Lawsuit Moves Forward.

On March 28, Bloomberg reported that a U.S. District Judge in Manhattan declined to dismiss a securities lawsuit over residential mortgage-backed securities Goldman Sachs sold in 2007, noting that an appellate decision overturning her findings in a related case had altered the legal landscape. RMBS Suit.

Under section 502(b)(6) of the United States Bankruptcy Code, a landlord's claim for damages under a lease rejected during the bankruptcy proceeding is capped at the greater of rent reserved under the lease for (a) one year; or (b) 15% or the remaining lease term, not to exceed three years. Under that calculation, a lease with a remaining term of 81 months or more would be entitled to claim greater than one year's rent.