Corporate Bankruptcy

Several months ago, I did a long post about how Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy was the poster child for dysfunction in chapter 11.The gist of the argument is that the procedural checks and balances that make chapter 11 bankruptcy a fair and credible system have broken down because of a confluence of three trends:

The United States Trustee settled with three large law firms that failed to disclose the nature of their relationship with the Sackler Family Purdue when they were engaged by Purdue in its bankruptcy. The result is that these firms will return $1 million in fees.  This action has produced headlines like "Bankruptcy Watchdog Bares Teeth at BigLaw in Purdue Ch. 11," but I have a completely different take on the story. I see this settlement as an indictment of the US Trustee Program as a complete failure in chapter 11. 

I've been doing some reading on officer and director fiduciary duties to creditors, and I am surprised that how much the academic and practitioner consensus seems to have settled on the notion that, in light of the Delaware caselaw following Gheewalla, it is essentially impossible for creditors to bring a fiduciary action against a board.

Jonathan Lipson and Gerald Posner have an important op-ed about the Purdue bankruptcy in the NYT and how the DOJ settlement with Purdue is likely to benefit the Sacklers. What's going on in Purdue is troubling, but not just for its own facts. Purdue illustrates a fundamental breakdown of the checks and balances in the corporate bankruptcy system.