The Chapter 11 case of Texas Rangers Baseball Partners (“TRB Partners”) continues to take fascinating turns, and is fast becoming a cautionary tale about the risks of using the bankruptcy process to achieve a quick result without the consent of all major parties.
The 2010 Major League Baseball season may not yet even be at the halfway point, but events in the Chapter 11 case of Texas Rangers Baseball Partners are beginning to resemble the taut back and forth of the final weeks of a pennant race.
The Texas Rangers’ lenders thought they had thrown a perfect strikeout pitch to prevent the confirmation of the Rangers’ proposed plan of reorganization. Instead, they now know how Hugh Casey felt.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued an en banc opinion (pdf) today in which it overruled the Frenville standard for determining the existence of a "claim" for purposes of Section 101(5) of the Bankruptcy Code.
In the end, all of the maneuvering in the Philadelphia Newspapers chapter 11 case appears to have done nothing but leave behind some very bad case law and a great deal of future uncertainty.
Some cases really should not be all that difficult. However, when judges choose to divorce statutory text completely from any reference to underlying legislative intent and long standing commercial practice, inexplicable results follow.
