Corporate Bankruptcy

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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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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June 7 virtual event on Second Circuit's Purdue Pharma decision

06/02/23

The Commercial Law League of America is holding a virtual event next week, free of charge and open to all, on broader implications of the Second Circuit's Purdue Pharma decision.

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Third-Party Releases Clearly Endorsed in the 2nd Circuit, At Long Last

05/31/23

Yesterday's 2nd Circuit opinion reconfirming Purdue Pharma's settlement/restructuring plan is an enlightening read for those interested in third-party releases.

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Calculation of Secured Claims

04/25/23

When I was a law student the rule I learned about secured claims was that they accrue post-petition interest and attorneys' fees (if provided for by contract or statute) up to the amount of the value of the collateral that exceeds their claims, but then nothing further once they are fully secured.  That was an easy enough rule to apply.

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LTL 2.0: The Largest Fraudulent Transfer in History

04/11/23

Today was the first day hearing for LTL 2.0.

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LTL, Part Deux (now with even more fraudulent transfers!)

04/05/23

This post is a joint post by Hon. Judith K. Fitzgerald (ret.)[*] and Adam Levitin

Here we go again. Precisely one hour and thirty-nine minutes after the dismissal of the bankruptcy filing of LTL, Johnson & Johnson’s artificially created talc-liability subsidiary, the company was right back at it again with the filing of a new chapter 11 case in New Jersey, again assigned to Judge Kaplan.

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FDIC's Poor Track Record in Holdco Bankruptcies

03/25/23

Last week I did a post about how the FDIC as receiver for Silicon Valley Bank probably doesn't have a claim against SVB Financial Group, the holdco of the bank. I got some pushback on that (including from a former student!), but I'm sticking to my guns here. It's a result that seems wrong and surprising, but if you look at the three most recent big bank holdco bankruptcies (this takes some digging in old bankruptcy court dockets), the FDIC has ended up with little or no claim.

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What Could Go Wrong When a DIP Maintains a Large, Uninsured Deposit Account at Silicon Valley Bank?

03/10/23

You gotta feel for BlockFi customers. First, they find themselves creditors in BlockFi's bankruptcy. And now they've found out that BlockFi had a large, uninsured deposit...at Silicon Valley Bank. Yup, it seems that BlockFi had $227 million in a money market deposit account at SVB.

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The Texas Two-Step's Liquidation Problem

01/15/23

This post is a joint post by Hon. Judith K. Fitzgerald (ret.)[*] and Adam Levitin

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