Do you serve on your condominium’s board as a fun way to meet your neighbors and test out your governance skills? What seems like a low-commitment diversion can balloon into a stressful time suck – or worse.  You may be held personally liable for breaching fiduciary duties to your condo.  And if you fall into really bad luck and end up in bankruptcy, you may not even be able to discharge debts for such liability, as a recent Fifth Circuit decision reminds us.  

In a chapter 15 decision, In re Daebo International Shipping Co., Judge Michael E.

Section 303(b)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code allows an involuntary petition to be filed by three or more creditors who hold non-contingent claims totaling at least $15,325 more than the liens on the debtor’s property.  Those creditors then must prove that the debtor was generally not paying its debts as they came due within the guidelines

When a contract is called a lease and has some characteristics of a lease, but operates to grant the lessee the exclusive right to mine and remove coal from the premises, how should the contract be treated in bankruptcy?  In a 

Creditors File Petition for Rehearing En Banc After Fifth Circuit Reversal and Remand of Bankruptcy Court Decision Awarding Creditors Make-Whole and Post-Petition Interest in Accordance with the Terms of the Underlying Agreement.

Executive Summary

LBOs can get messy. Such was the case for the Tribune Company, which, in conjunction with its private equity investor, borrowed approximately $10.7 billion in 2007 to finance its buyout. Soon after the LBO was completed, Tribune experienced financial difficulties that made it unable to service its new debt, and, in December 2008, the company filed for chapter 11 protection.

Recently, a bankruptcy court in the First Circuit, confronted with whether the debtors’ chapter 12 case could be converted to a chapter 11 case – an issue over which there is split in the case law – determined that the Debtors’ chapter 12 case could not be converted to a chapter 11 case.

Relevant Statutes and Statutory Provisions:

This month marks the five year anniversary of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ chapter 11 filings. As a changeup from the world of oil and gas, we’ve prepared a light lookback to the ball club’s bankruptcy.

Practitioners generally identify “excusable neglect” as the standard that bankruptcy courts apply in determining whether to allow a creditor’s untimely proof of claim. A creditor who lets the bar date pass finds itself in the undesirable position of having to persuade the bankruptcy court that its neglect to file a timely proof of claim was excusable.

A foreign company makes a foreign distribution to foreign shareholders shortly before merging with a U.S. company in a highly-leveraged LBO.  The resulting company files a chapter 11 petition in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York 13 months later.  Can the foreign transfer be avoided as a fraudulent conveyance under section 548 of the Bankruptcy Code?  Previously, the answer was almost certainly not (at least in the Southern District of New York).