You ship goods to a customer that is having financial difficulties. The customer sends you a check for the goods. What do you do?...more
Bankruptcy and appellate courts disagree over the standard that should apply to a request for payment of a break-up fee or expense reimbursement to the losing bidder in a sale of assets outside the ordinary course of the...more
This post is about a junkyard, hogs getting slaughtered, and a bankruptcy judge poised to sanction a creditor and her counsel. The message from the case to would-be claimants in other cases is simple: do not “overreach.” In...more
In In re Energy Future Holdings Corp., 990 F.3d 728 (3d Cir. 2021), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that even though a "stalking horse" bidder failed to obtain necessary regulatory approvals to close an...more
On March 2, 2021, stationery and gift retailer Paper Source filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating in court filings that effects of the COVID-19 pandemic damaged its finances and operations. Paper Source stated that in...more
Nothing is more frustrating to a trade creditor holding a large unpaid balance owed by a debtor in bankruptcy than the risk that payments the trade creditor received before the debtor filed bankruptcy may be clawed back by...more
A basic tenet of bankruptcy law, premised on the legal separateness of a debtor prior to filing for bankruptcy and the estate created upon a bankruptcy filing, is that prepetition debts are generally treated differently than...more
In this series, we look at how various payment rights are treated in bankruptcy. A summary like this could not possibly address every right that might arise in any given bankruptcy case. We have omitted several of the...more
The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware held that corporate income tax liability attributable to transactions before the filing of a bankruptcy petition are nevertheless administrative expenses because the...more
The Third Circuit denied a $275 million break-up fee to a bidder that was unsuccessful in its attempt to buy the crown-jewel assets in the high-profile EFH bankruptcy case. In re Energy Future Holdings Corp., No 18-1109, 2018...more
The Bankruptcy Court in Delaware recently denied a request for an administrative expense claim to an entity that tried but failed to buy a debtor’s key assets. The decision arises out of the first of three attempts by...more
Amidst a surge in retail bankruptcies, two recent decisions construing section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code directly limit suppliers’ ability to seek administrative claims for goods shipped to a debtor in the period...more
In the first six months of 2014 the Supreme Court has already issued two opinions concerning the authority of the bankruptcy courts. The first opinion, Law v. Siegel, 134 S. Ct. 1188 (2014), was issued in March. In Law,...more
On December 13, 2012, Judge Vincent L. Briccetti from the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York denied the appellant Notes Trustee’s request to compel payment of an administrative expense claim....more