Williams v. City of Milwaukee City Clerk (In re Williams), 473 B.R. 307 (Bankr. E.D. Wis. 2012) –

I. Summary

Kline v. Deutsche Bank Nat’l Trust Co. (In re Kline), 172 B.R. 98 (B.A.P. 10th Cir. 2012) –

Decisions in two recent cases raise concerns for those interested in buying assets out of bankruptcy.

Earlier this week, George L.

This article is Part Five in a seven-part series on how to structure sales and what to do when your customer fails to pay.  You can find previous articles in this series here: Structuring Sales to Ensure Payment; Signs of Trouble Before Payment Default; Default by a Customer; Knowledge is Power and What to Consider When Non-Payment Leads to Litigation.  Please subscribe to this blog by entering your email in the box on the left, or check back weekly for additional articles in the series.

This week, Edward Gavin, the liquidating trustee (the "Trustee") for the Ultimate Escapes bankruptcy, filed preference complaints against several defendants.  Under the complaints, the Trustee alleges that the defendants received preferential transfers that are avoidable under 11 U.S.C. section 547 of the Bankruptcy Code.  For those unfamiliar with this bankruptcy proceeding, Ultimate Escapes ("Ultimate" or the "Debtor") filed petitions for bankruptcy in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court on September 20, 2010. 

To successfully reorganize in Chapter 11, a bankrupt company may need to retain key employees who understand the company’s business and who can design and implement the company’s reorganization plan. Retaining and properly incentivizing these employees during a Chapter 11 case can be challenging for a number of reasons.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently vacated a decision by the District Court for the Southern District of New York, which had declined to enforce the contractual allocation of claim impairment risk between a bankruptcy claim buyer and its seller.[1] Relying on the plain language of the documents, the Second Circuit held in Longacre Master Fund, Ltd. v. ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. (Longacre)that the debtors’ objection to the claims had triggered the seller’s repurchase obligation.

In a decision described as the first of its kind, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York ruled that claims based on soft dollar credits issued by Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI) to numerous investment advisers were not entitled to the special protections afforded to “customer claims” under the Securities Investor Protection Act (SIPA).