Bankruptcy Blogs

Meet Judge Robinson

01/01/24

Shad Robinson took the bench as the twelfth bankruptcy judge to serve in the Western District of Texas on February 21, 2023. Judge Robinson, by his own telling, took an unlikely path to law school and practicing bankruptcy law. He is fairly unique among his bankruptcy colleagues in that he practiced in a small firm in a small city and practiced both consumer and business bankruptcy. However, he does possess one credential common among the current judiciary in that he clerked for one the Western District Bankruptcy Judges.

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Supreme Court Strikes Blow for Deciding Cases and Explains What Is Jurisdictional and What Is Not

11/26/23

Author's Note: I started writing this post in April. My life has been a bit busy this year so I haven't blogged as much as in prior years. If you are already familiar with the holding of Moac Mall Holdings, you may want to skip to the end to the What It Means section.

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The Valuation Paradox

10/18/23

In the program Who Killed the Company? Tips and Trends in Claims and Defenses, Judge Marvin Isgur and his fellow panelists confronted issues such as in pari delicto, insurance coverage and waiver of fiduciary duties. However, one discussion led by Judge Isgur focused on whether solvency should be determined based on what was known at the time of the valuation or what was known at a later date. The discussion highlighted that valuation can be a moving target based on what is known at a given point in time. 

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NCBJ 2023: The View from Austin

10/15/23

 The National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges came to Austin for its 2023 conference with the slogan Blues, Barbecue and Bankruptcy. Here are some images from the conference.

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Rats! I need a new car and I’m stuck in Chapter 13

09/05/23

Do You Need to Finance a Car in Chapter 13? The last thing you want to do is get further into debt while you are in Chapter 13.  (The goal of Chapter 13 is to get out of debt.)  But sometimes you need to replace a broken down junker. So, you need financing for a […]

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Creative Destruction in Small Business Bankruptcy

08/29/23

Two distantly related items caught my eye this morning, as both reinforce the need for "creative destruction" as a response to all-too-common small business failure.

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Nondebtor Releases and the Future of Mass Torts

08/18/23

Certain members of the bankruptcy academy and bar seem to have their knickers in a twist over the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari to review the nonconsensual nondebtor releases in Purdue. Conventional wisdom is that SCOTUS is going to find that there's no statutory authority whatsoever for nonconsensual nondebtor releases outside of the asbestos context (expressio unius and Congress doesn't hide elephants in mouseholes....).

Let's be clear: nonconsensual nondebtor releases are not necessary to resolve mass tort cases.

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Unhappy Campers and Their Credit Cards

08/11/23

This story about the failure of a company that ships duffel bags to/from sleep-away camps has an interesting payment systems meets bankruptcy angle that got me particularly excited given that I'm teaching payment systems this fall:

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Treasury in the Red... with Yellow

08/02/23

Freight company Yellow is on the verge of bankruptcy. It's not a company whose financial distress would normally stand out but for the fact that it received $700M in national security loans from the US Treasury in 2020, and, oh man, are taxpayers going to take it on the chin. 

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